Putting Iran’s ‘violence, bloodshed and chaos’ in the spotlight

September 28, 2017 by David Amess, The Washington Times

Why a nuclear deal must not mean Iran gets a free pass on human rights

President Trump deserves credit for his first-ever address to the U.N. General Assembly last week. While his comments on Iran made many of the gathered world leaders and diplomats feel uneasy, his observations were actually spot on.
Since the 1979 Iranian revolution, no U.S. president has ever provided such a poignant description of the theocratic regime in Iran.
“The Iranian government masks a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of a democracy.

It has turned a wealthy country with a rich history and culture into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos. The longest-suffering victims of Iran’s leaders are, in fact, its own people.”
One’s view of Mr. Trump’s policies, character, or politics aside, it is almost impossible to disagree with this description because it very much defines the theocracy that has held 80 million Iranians hostage for the past four decades and crushed their aspirations for a better, more prosperous future.
The latest interim report of the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran provides much evidence of the Iranian people’s suffering. Amid all the serious violations by the Iranian authorities that are documented in the report, several paragraphs stand out as they refer to the massacre of political prisoners in 1988, which is one of the worst crimes in Iran’s modern history, though it has been largely ignored.
The report states, “Between July and August 1988, thousands of political prisoners, men, women and teenagers, were reportedly executed pursuant to a fatwa issued by the then Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. A three-man commission was reportedly created with a view to determining who should be executed. The bodies of the victims were reportedly buried in unmarked graves and their families never informed of their whereabouts.”