Why Did Iran Say “NO” to the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights?

Huffington Post, Posted: 7/5/11- Less than a week after the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed former Maldivian Foreign Minister Ahmed Shaheed as Special Rapporteur on Human Rights for Iran, Head of Iran’s Judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, in a TV interview said, “accepting the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights is not our policy.”

In March, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution establishing a monitoring mechanism for Iran and appointing a Special Rapporteur. Last month, three candidates were considered for this position. The Iranian side, knowing that a Special Rapporteur would be immediately appointed soon, sent a message to Geneva that the Rapporteur on Iran should have three qualifications: Be a man, be a Muslim, and not be from an Arab country. One of the male candidates didn’t seem to cause any controversy for Tehran; Ahmed Shaheed’s appointment met all of Iran’s requirements. Read more

The U.S. Pressures Iran on Human Rights

Huffington Post, Posted May 20, 2011- Many may be critical of America’s human rights policies, particularly its double standards when it comes to the records of its allies in the Middle East and beyond, not to mention in Bahrain. But human rights activists and organizations have welcomed the Obama administration’s presence at the Human Rights Council in Geneva since 2009. Like it or not, “without a strong U.S. counterweight, non-democratic states such as Cuba, Algeria, China and Pakistan joined forces to blunt the Council’s work and bully other states.”

The UN will appoint a special rapporteur for Iran in the weeks to come.

In Geneva, Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, the U.S. representative to the Council is a superstar. She is the face of U.S. human rights in town, a master of building coalitions and cooperation with different partners to make things happen. In an interview with me in Geneva, she responded to questions about the urgency and significance of establishing a monitoring mechanism for Iran, the role of politics in U.S. human rights policy, the perception of U.S. hypocrisy towards its friends and foes, her opinion about the Iranian officials’ allegations on the politicization of UN human rights mechanisms, and finally, why the U.S. is going aggressively after Iran’s human rights record. Excerpts from the interview follow: Read more

Iran’s “Blogfather” Gets 20-Year Prison Sentence

SAN FRANCISCO, California, Sep 28, 2010 (IPS) — A week after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told heads of state gathered for the U.N. General Assembly in New York that his government does not jail its citizens for expressing their opinions, Iran’s Revolutionary Court sentenced Hossein Derakhshan, an internationally known Iranian-Canadian blogger, to 19 and a half years in prison.

On Monday, the conservative website Mashreq announced the verdict issued by Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Courts.

Arrested in October 2008, Derakhshan had been charged with “cooperation with hostile states” and “propagating against the regime,” among other counts, the site said. In addition to the lengthy prison term, he was fined and banned from membership in political parties and work in the media for a period of five years. Read more

Iran on the move

OpenDemocracy.org-Iran has experienced of one of the most exciting presidential elections since the Islamic revolution of 1979. All of the four candidates who appear on the ballot-paper in the first round of voting on 12 June 2009 may be handpicked by Iran’s Guardian Council, and each can be considered either a father or a child of the revolution. But two are reformists who embrace progressive agendas, and whose popular campaigns suggest that millions of Iranians - 70% of whom are under 30 years old - believe that Iran needs reform.

For Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. The leader elected in June 2005 expected an easy contest from opposition candidates who could be easily discredited for past failures or outflanked on nationalist rhetoric. Instead, he has been forced to grapple with harsh criticism of his economic policy, foreign policy and human-rights record - and is resorting to extreme denunciation of his rivals as a way of shoring up his core support. Read more

Foreign Policy 101: What President Obama Could Learn…

For President Obama, who already has shown his desire to talk to Iranian leaders, there is no foreign policy lesson more helpful than that of Roxana Saberi’s case of arrest and release. It shows how the Iranian government functions and could teach the United States how to speak to hard-liners in Tehran. These lessons are:

1- Everything in Iran is impossible, and at the same time, anything is possible. One day you can be accused of espionage for no apparent reason, go to prison and three months later you could walk free, simple as that. On the contrary, you can go to prison under the same conditions and reason (like the case of Silva Harotonian who has been jailed since June 2008, simply, for working for an American NGO) and stay in prison for years. It all depends on many different factors. Uncertainty rules! Read more

Roxana Saberi and the Iranian Fast Spy-Making Machine!

HuffPost-The Iranian intelligence services are constantly announcing the capture and arrest of spies that gather classified information for the Western countries. Roxana Saberi, an American-Iranian journalist is the latest person to be facing such a charge.

Most people who have been accused of spying are detained without access to a lawyer or any other fair and free judicial process including a just trial. Usually they are released from prison after a few months. Surprisingly, most of these people then leave Iran within a few more months. This has made the government in Tehran the only government on the earth that catches and releases its spies.

The authorities have announced that Roxana has accepted all of the charges. No surprise! Many prisoners do accept all the charges after spending a few months in solitary confinement under huge psychological and physical pressure. To understand why, here is a joke that masterfully tells the story of how Iran’s intelligence service operates: Read more

Suzanne Maloney: Both Obama and Clinton want negotiations but not a nuclear Iran

The United States will not initiate dialogue with the Iranian government, given the possible boost for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-elections next June, according to Suzanne Maloney, former State Department policy advisor and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

During his campaign Barack Obama has insisted on negotiating with Iranian leaders, regardless of its extensive political risk. But considering Iran’s domestic politics, American diplomats prefer to wait and see who will be Iran’s next president.

Many believe that Iran’s worsening economic situation, demonstrated by its high inflation, skyrocketing unemployment and the fall of oil prices, which have prevented Ahmadinejad from fulfilling his promises to the Iranian people, might change the result of the upcoming elections. Read more

When Palin Meet Ahmadinejad in Tehran?

  It was a meaningful moment this morning for Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be present in the General Assembly Hall to listen to President W. Bush’s last speech to member states. But, is this a message to the United States? It certainly is. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the mood in Tehran and Washington has changed.

It might seem that Ahmadinejad’s third appearance at the United Nations this week seemed to provide the Republican campaign with another chance to attack Obama over his previous promise that, should he become president, he will meet with U.S. adversaries, including the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But the fact of the matter is that, regardless of who goes to the White House this January, the U.S. will start negotiations with the Iranian government, whether or not Ahmadinejad is Iran’s new president. Read more