Human rights set aside while Rouhani seeks Iran nuclear agreement

FT.com

Elaheh Mojaradi spends most Mondays completing the lengthy paperwork required by Tehran’s notorious Evin prison for a half-hour talk through a window with her husband Mohsen Mirdamadi, a reformist political prisoner.

The status of Mr Mirdamadi, former head of parliament’s national security committee, and tens of other political prisoners and journalists in Iran, has barely changed since centrist president Hassan Rouhani swept to power last summer promising to strengthen civil society and improve basic freedoms.

“Leave is cut and medical care is denied,” Ms Mojaradi said. She and other families say the pressure on political prisoners and their families has even intensified under the new government, with some complaining of new rounds of questioning and intimidation in recent months, charges echoed in a report by Amnesty International, the rights group, this week. Their treatment, she said, is rooted in the mentality of “forces whose survival depends on radicalising the political situation”.

Constitutionally, prisons are controlled by the judiciary, one of the power bases of hardliners who, though small in number, have used their stronghold to block any meaningful political and cultural reforms.

For now, there is little Mr Rouhani can do as he consciously avoids confrontation with his hardline opponents so as not to jeopardise nuclear negotiations, which are resuming in Vienna this week.

Many Iranians nonetheless expected the president to stand up to hardline forces. Supporters of the opposition Green Movement voted for him in the hope that he could help release opposition leaders Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, as indicated during his election campaign. The two leaders have been under house arrest since 2011 and are reported to be in poor health. The first picture of Mr Moussavi to appear for three years showed him in hospital this week.

However, there is no sign of their release – reportedly because they refuse to drop allegations that the 2009 election, in which they both ran, was massively rigged to the benefit of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the former president.

As the political prisoners languish in jail, the number of executions carried out by Iran is believed to be on the rise, increasing from 314 in 2012 to 369 in 2013, according to Amnesty International.

The judiciary has also banned three newspapers over the past year.
Sadegh Larijani, the head of Iran’s judiciary, accused foreign media and opposition supporters of seeking to “revive the seditionist current [the Green Movement]” and vowed there would be “no laxity”.

Analysts believe there is genuine concern inside the regime that western powers will continue to put the Islamic regime under pressure even if the nuclear stalemate is resolved.
They fear that any outside interference could provoke public dissent and trigger a new round of anti-regime protests that could be exploited by the US and some European countries to push for a regime change in Tehran.

The meeting between Catherine Ashton, EU foreign policy chief, and a group of leading women’s rights activists during her visit to Tehran in March fuelled such suspicions and led to further pressure on human rights activists.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader and ultimate decision maker, has so far curbed hardliners from sabotaging nuclear talks. However, he has not given the same backing to Mr Rouhani’s government on other issues.

Mr Khamenei has repeatedly said that the nuclear dispute is merely an “excuse”, for the west to put pressure on Tehran and he insists that even if an agreement is reached, the US will continue to use issues like human rights to marginalise the Iranian government with a view to overthrowing the Islamic regime.