Iranian dissidents are increasingly worried that — with the nuclear deal signed and business prospects looming — the West will give Iran a pass on human rights. European dignitaries visiting Tehran in recent weeks refrained from criticizing the regime’s domestic record, which has actually gotten worse under President Hassan Rouhani.
But now is when the West, on a clock, most urgently needs to support dissidents. Otherwise, a decade from now, when restrictions on Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs are lifted under this deal, the West will confront the same militant and terrorist-sponsoring regime that rules Iran today — now with nuclear arms.
Iranian dissidents are sounding the alarm. Heshmat Tabarzadi, who spent the better part of the last 15 years in prison, wrote that “these days, after the mullahs achieved the agreement they needed, pressure on civil society is increasing.” Fariborz Raees Dana, a left-wing economist and also a former political prisoner, told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that even with a deal, “a government that considers censorship its main power tool and sees it as a part of its ideology, will continue it in any way it can.”
Sadegh Ziba Kalam, a reformer and longtime supporter of president Hassan Rouhani, believes the deal will only to a freer society if Iranians pressure the regime, warning against any expectation that Rouhani would be pre-active on this front.
This skepticism is at odds with the tone in the West, where President Obama and others express hope the deal will open up Iran, strengthen its middle class and put the regime on a less aggressive path. In the last two decades, Tehran has moderated its policies only under pressure; resuming its aggression when that pressure is relieved.
After Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989, new President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani presented himself as a symbol of moderation and pragmatism. International companies invested in Iran and the world decided to treat Tehran as a normal member of the international community; but Rafsanjani rhetoric wasn’t matched by action.
Instead, Iran unleashed a wave of terror attacks around the world, with its agents striking a Jewish cultural center in Argentina and a U.S. compound in Saudi Arabia. It also brutally cracked down and assassinated dissidents at home and across the world — a campaign of terror that finally forced its European partners to isolate the regime.
To relieve that isolation, the regime then allowed a new reformer, Mohammad Khatami, to win election. But Khatami’s Tehran Spring also did not last.
As Western companies and diplomats returned, the regime — flush with cash from foreign investment and rising oil prices — resumed assassinating dissidents, raiding universities, shutting down newspapers and jailing dissidents.
Khatami in turn was followed by the extreme government of Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — who made the nuclear bomb program a top priority.
The appropriate response from the West would have been pressure; instead, President Obama, upon entering office, sought to soothe Iran’s regime by offering a new chapter in relations.
The supreme leader’s answer to Obama’s extended hand was the brutal crackdown of opposition forces in the streets of Tehran in 2009 and the acceleration of the nuclear program. It was only after several rounds of crippling sanctions, imposed by the U.S. Congress with Obama’s reluctant sign-on, that the regime chose to put on a more moderate face, with Rouhani replacing Ahmadinejad as president and dispatched to negotiate a deal.
Those who hoped Rouhani’s victory would mean an end to Ahmadinejad’s rampant human rights violations were sorely disappointed. Under his watch, Iran has executed Iranians at a much higher rate than under his hardline predecessor. The ayatollahs even revived the long abandoned punishments of amputation for thieves.
Last week, Iran tried to assassinate the leaders of two major Kurd opposition groups and executed a political prisoner convicted of “waging war against God” — the Islamic Republic’s equivalence of Stalin-era deviance from Marxist doctrine.
The bottom line for the West: Abandoning Iranian dissidents to appease Tehran is bad policy. The nuclear deal will not encourage the regime to mend its ways. To the contrary, it feels vindicated in its actions by the flow of dignitaries and foreign delegations coming to Iran to hail the deal.
It is only by supporting and empowering Iran’s civil society and its pro-democracy movement that meaningful change will ever happen. It is more vital than ever that the West pressure the regime on the human-rights front and wield coercive diplomacy and human rights’ sanctions to shield its civil society from the regime’s oppression.
Ghasseminejad, a former student activist in Iran, is associate fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and its Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance.
