Women Rights in Iran: Women, Voiceless Victims of the Most Violent Crimes

The Iranian hard line regime arrested 33 women, who were peacefully protesting in front of a courthouse in tehran, on 4th of March.

They were protesting the capture of five of their colleagues who had been arrested during another women rights demonstration last June.

“These arrests are illegal since the constitution authorizes demonstrations. they had no logical justification because the women were just taking part in a gathering,” Iranian human rights lawyer Mohammad Ali Dadkhah told reporters.

“Based on Article 27 of the Iranian Constitution, demonstrations and gatherings are free if arms are not carried by demonstrators, said Nasrin Sotoudeh, a human rights lawyer.

The Worldwide Press Freedom Organization said: “These women have not broken any law. They simply exercised their right to demonstrate peacefully.”

The Los Angeles Times reports that “About 50 peaceful protestors were quickly confronted and overwhelmed by riot police, including dozens of young female officers wearing bright green uniforms with red stripes.”

Most of the detainees were released on International Women’s Day, on bails ranging from $11,000 to $55,000, the Associated Press reports.

Before their release, the arrested women had started a hunger strike, and at least one woman was held in solitary confinement, according to Human Rights Watch.

The families of two activists were visited by Iranian officials and asked to sign pledges that the women would also avoid the International Women’s Day demonstration, the BBC reports.

As usual, the ultra conservatives accused the women’s rights activists of having been bribed and motivated by the anti revolutionary agents who want to promote curroption in the society.

The Keyhan newspaper, Iran’s most hard line publication, said that “Women’s rights activists of being sponsored by what the paper called executives of American plans for soft overthrow of the Islamic Republic.”

A former member of parliament’s national security committee, Elahe Koulaie, said that “These authorities are very pessimistic about the intentions of foreigners, and assign this kind of protest to external factors.”

Dr. Ebadi and Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan have issued a joint statement on Wednesday, calling for an end to all discrimination against women in Iran. “We know there is a direct relationship between peace, justice, and respect for human rights. As long as women are denied human rights, anywhere in the world, there can be no justice and no peace. Recognizing women’s equal rights, therefore, is an essential requirement for the creation of strong, sustainable, and stable societies and ensuring that women enjoy equality with men in all areas of life are key steps to making human rights a universal reality,” Ebadi and Khan stated.

Once again, the Europeans reacted to the Iranian hard line regime’s brutal suppression of the human rights supporters, by issuing an statement condemning the recent arrests. But isn’t it yet time to act, instead of passing useless papers around?

“The activists were exercising their established right to freedom of assembly and opinion, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations,” the presidency of the European Union said in an statement.

“The presidency of the European Union calls for the immediate and unconditional release of those still being detained and the cessation of proceedings against those already released,” the statement added.

The human rights activists have always been suppressed since the Islamic revolution, even in the 8 year period of the reformist government led by Mohammad Khatami. But the issue has recently gotten so worse that has made many of the former (reformist) and current (utlra conservative) governmental agents to publicly complain about it.

“Today is no longer a day for someone to be jailed for thinking and expressing their views,” said parliament deputy Soheila Jelodarzadeh, speaking at a women's conference.

Isa Saharkhiz, a former editor and reformist said: “They are afraid of the women’s movement, because there are some links between them and journalists, and they cooperate with the foreign NGOs.”

The US government was among the very first foreign organizations which officially reacted to suppression of the women’s movement in Iran. But do they really care about practice of the human rights in the Middle East, or is it just another silly excuse for Mr. Bush’s government to attack the Iranioan regime? It perhaps is the latter one, I guess.

The US State Department said on Thursday that, “it was deeply disturbed by the reports.”

“These repressive actions by the regime highlight an alarming trend of intolerance toward the expression of independent views by the Iranian people,” spokesman Sean McCormack said.

For years, many human rights activists and organizations have kept calling for justice and freedom for the Iranian people in the international assemblies, however, it does not seem to have had any practical changes on the Iranian people’s quite miserable lifestyles.

Hadi Ghaemi, Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch said: “Iranian women are at the cutting edge of social activism in Iran, although they are visible and extremely successful in every social, economic and cultural domain. Iranian law treats them as second class citizens, and discriminates against them. During the past year, the Iranian government has substantially stepped up its persecution and prosecution of peaceful women’s rights advocates.”

Director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch, Sarah Leah Whitson, said that,“These arrests raise Iran’s repression of peaceful activists to a new level. There are absolutely no legal grounds for arresting these women, under international or Iranian law.”

“The government of President Ahmadinejad is trying to roll back even the modest freedoms won by Iranian civil society over the last decade,” Whitson said.

Many people, a lot of them inside Iran, think as soon as some political detainee/arrestee is released, everything is over and they can go back to their normal personal and professional lives. But the truth is far from that.

Fariba Davoodi Mohajer, a prominent Iranian campaigner for women’s rights asked: “Are we supposed to be happy that all the other women were released? “Meanwhile, there are open cases before the court for all these women. And at any moment, they might be detained again.”

“For the first time, five women were accused on charges of working against national security, undermining the basis of government and advertising against the government by speaking with foreign media,” she said.

An Anti-Jewish President: Ahmadinejad and Denial of Holocaust

While millions of people all around the world simply attribute Ahmadinejad’s anti jewish statements to his mad genocidial intents based on his hard line beliefs, there are experts who believe the reality is far from what it seems to be.

“Holocaust revisionism is really what the Islamic Republic’s leaders believe, and not just what Ahmadinejad believes,” said Frank Nikbakht, a local Iranian Jewish activist and researcher and former public affairs director for the Council of Iranian American Jewish Organizations.

“It is also part of their psychological warfare arsenal in their serious struggle to eliminate Israel, and their long-term program of global jihad as embodied in the current Iranian constitution,” he added.

Despite the fact that Ahmadinejad’s thoughtless racial statements behind the international tribunes has put the Iranian nation in a lot of trouble, the majority of the Iran’s educated class of people seem to have faced the whole thing productively, giving it a positive look.

“This is the first time there has been a visible interest by millions of curious young Iranian Muslims in the issue of the Holocaust in a positive and sympathetic way, a result that is exactly the opposite of Ahmadinejad’s intent. Countless Iranian groups and intellectuals are learning the truth about the Holocaust from articles written on the Web in Persian and through media broadcasts,” Nikbakht said.

Since the very first time Ahmadinejad talked about his dream to wipe Israel off the world’s map, there have been several analyses of his behaviour published in the media, very different in some cases.

Director of the Iranian studies program at Stanford University, Dr. Abbas Milani, said: “The most important reason for Ahmadinejad’s comments, I think, has been that he has been an absolute utter failure in his economic policies, in his international proposals, and he has isolated Iran more than ever,” Milani said. “Like most politicians, he likes to change the subject and this has again unfortunately done that for him.”

“Ahmadinejad uses Holocaust denial as a means to delegitimize Israel's existence,” said Yigal Carmon, president of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), in Washington D.C.

“Holocaust denial is important to Ahmadinejad because the Holocaust lends moral justification to the creation and continued existence of the State of Israel. Ahmadinejad’s primary obsession is not with the Holocaust, but with Israel’s very existence. If the Holocaust can get in the way of achieving this goal, it must be denied,” Carmon said at a recent Holocaust denial symposium at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

Responsible for BRS social action initiatives, Rabbi Simcha Freedman, said that “We are witness to a madman, Ahmadinejad, who is today visiting with the president of Sudan, Omar Al-Bashir, and telling him he supports the progress of his country. What progress? The Sudanese president is allowing the genocide of a people to continue in Darfur.”

But the story sounds somehow different when told by the Iranian high ranking officials. But whose version of the story is more credibe?

A senior adviser to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and president of the Holocaust Foundation, Mohammad Ali Ramin, said: “the Islamic Republic addressed an issue as delicate as that of the Holocaust on which Western governments are extremely sensitive, aware of the price it would have to pay on the international stage.”

“We were convinced that denying the Holocaust and underlining the destruction of Israel we would have diverted international attention away from the Iranian nuclear dossier. Denying the Holocaust has posed problems for that part of the West which, by sending the nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council, sought to bring us to our knees,” he added.

A lot of Iranian publications protested Ramin’s statement right away, calling them naiive, disruptive and unrealistic.

“Considering the high price paid by the country after the denial of the Holocaust, it would be no surprise to discover that president Ahmadinejad had been pushed to adopt such a position by an agent of the secret services of the Zionist regime,” wrote Baztab, a popular Iranian news webtie, in an apparent reference to Ramin.

In spite of all the irritations which Ahmadinejad and his colleagues have caused for both the free world and the Iranian nation, he keeps repeating those naiive words and continues to make anti semitic statements wherever he notices a camera filming him! Here are some instances.

“Why should Palestinians suffer for the anti-Semitism of Europeans?" Ahmadinejad said at a meeting on 24 February.”

At a previous meeting with US religious leaders in New York last year, Ahmadinejad said: “Let me ask you a question. What is it with Zionists and America? Anytime anyone says anything against the Zionists, it creates problems in the US. Are Zionists ruling America? Perhaps this is due to the sensationalising efforts of the media.”

Ahmadinejad also said: “Why the event should not be studied, giving a place to all opinions Why do you permit questions on the very existence of God, but not about the existence of the Holocaust?”

Senior legal council of the Jewish human rights group B’nai Brith, David Matas, said at a news conference: “Iran's president is inciting genocide against Jews.”

Israel’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, said in Brussels: "Iran is not only a threat to Israel but to the entire free world.”

Ahmadinejad’s racial statement has not only irritated the Israelis and the jews as a whole, but also naturally lots of people from all corners of the free world.

The Conservative Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity, Jason Kenney, said that “Ahmadinejad is possessed with a maniacal hatred, and promises repeatedly to use violence to obliterate the Jewish people from the face of the earth. This is a man who must be stopped by the civilized world, and by his own people.”

Mount Royal MP and the Liberal human rights critic, Irwin Cotler, said that “Canada, as a state party of the Genocide Convention, should initiate a complaint against Iran before the International Court of Justice.”

Iran and Growth of Terrorism in the Region: The Quds Force & Other Shi'a Militant Groups

On Feb. 20, BBC News reported that, “US’ Iran attack plans revealed: US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure.”

“This should be no surprise to anyone. There are two reasons for this action: Iran refuses to stop its nuclear program, and the US accuses Iran’s secretive Quds Force of arming Iraqi militants with deadly bomb-making material, recruiting Iraqis and supporting not only Shiite militias but also Shiites allied with Washington,” reports Fox News.

The Quds Force is an elite unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) that carries out operations outside of Iran, and is is organized into eight different directorates based on geographic location, including Iraq and Lebanon.

“What Quds does is very specialized, the most dangerous work, operating underground,” said Mahan Abedin, an Iran expert and the research director at the London based Center for the Study of Terrorism.

“It would be very incriminating and dangerous for Iran to directly supply weapons to the militias, and it’s not a part of Iranian policy to directly confront the Americans,” he continued.

That is why many experts introduce the Quds force activities as a part of the Iran’s proxy war against america. A proxy war is a war where two powers, use third parties as a supplement or a substitute for fighting each other directly.

“The goal is likely to enable these armed formations to gain an advantage over their Sunni rivals in the battle for power that Iran expects could erupt later. They are looking to beyond when the Americans withdraw. They see the Shiite militias as natural allies,” Added Mr. Abedin.

“Iran likely does not want a direct confrontation with U.S. troops in Iraq but is backing militiamen to ensure Shiites win any civil war with Iraqi Sunnis after the Americans leave,” experts said on Thursday 15 Feb.

Many countries in the world have identified the Quds Force as a terrorist group.

The chief U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Major General William Caldwell, said “Iranian and Iraqi detainees in U.S. custody said in interrogations that the Quds Force provides support to extremist groups here in Iraq both in the forms of money and in weaponry.”

Expectedly, George Bush, the US president, is most concerned about existance of the Quds Force and its curroptions in Iran-Iraq border.

Bush said: “What we do know is that the Quds Force was instrumental in providing these deadly IEDs to networks inside of Iraq. What we don’t know is whether or not the head leaders of Iran ordered the Quds Force to do what they did.”

“There are weapons in Iraq that are harming US troops. But whether Ahmadinejad ordered the Quds Force to do this, I don’t think we know,” he added.

But how deep is the Quds Force involved into Iraq’s issues and what role is it exactly playing in the Iraqi current affairs?

A Shiite political party official told AP that “In addition to supplying weapons to Iraqi militias, the Quds Force has been recruiting Iraqi Shiites, giving them up to $150 a month and sending some to Iran for training.”

The US Vice President, Dick Cheney, said on a trip to Australia last week: “We’ve made it clear we believe they have engaged in providing improvised explosive devices, for example, to insurgents inside Iraq that have been used against coalition forces.”

So it has been proven as a fact that the Iran has been using the Quds Force to secure its interests in any unstable parts of the world, and the Middle East in particular. But who is really in charge of them?

“There are people who believe the Quds Force does not move a muscle without getting explicit orders from the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. There are other people who believe they are rogues. The weight of evidence is somewhere in the middle.” said Kenneth Pollack, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

“We do have evidence here and there, circumstantial in many ways, that the Quds Force guys and other people in the Revolutionary Guard like to push the edge of the envelope, But Tehran almost certainly told the Quds Force to go into Iraq,” Pollack added.

“They are the brains behind those who are pulling the trigger; you are never going to see their fingerprints,” said one official.

Commander of the U.S. led forces in Iraq, Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, said on Thursday that “The bottom line is that we believe that the Quds Force has been involved in training and possibly providing funding and potentially weapons to some groups within Iraq. So we watch that extremely carefully.”

War on Iran: A Political Bluff or a Potential Threat?

These days there are rumours about the US planning to attack Iran everywhere. We read about current and former high ranking officials making comments on the story every single day. But how practical could this threat be?

“It is a message of pressure and possibility,” says a senior U.S. official. “We’re trying to keep up the pressure but also hold open the possibility of constructive dialogue, if they meet the conditions.”

It has been often difficult to understand both sides of the conflict as they have been making confusing decisions most of the time.

Says Ray Takeyh, author of Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic: “If Rice doesn’t want to lay the groundwork for talking to the Iranians and Syrians, why bother to attend the Baghdad conference? For the first time in this melodrama, the Iranians are easier to understand than the Americans.”

Another very important element to this conflict is Israel, which seems to be most uncomfortable with the Iranian regime’s harsh foreign policies. It has been predicted that in case if the US attacks Iran, Israel will be the first target for the Iranian missiles, as the America’s biggest ally in the region. Also, Ahmadinejad has many times questioned the Israel’s right of existance and has repeatedly revealed his interest in wiping Israel off the world’s map.

In a threatening statement, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on the state television recently: “Realities in the region show that the arrogant front, headed by the US and its allies, will be the principal loser in the region.”

The Israel Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, said in an interview on German television: “Iran openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say this is the same level, when you are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, and Russia?”

“We cannot tolerate, we will not tolerate, those who challenge Israel’s right to exist while actively seeking to develop the catastrophic weapons to fulfill their goals,” Olmert said at a convention in Los Angeles last year.

The former Saudi diplomat said: “We have two nightmares: for Iran to acquire the bomb and for the United States to attack Iran. I’d rather the Israelis bomb the Iranians, so we can blame them. If America does it, we will be blamed.”

Spite all these rumors, the US officials have always denied having planned an attack to Iran, saying that they would prefer a diplomatic solution to the conflict.

Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said: “The United States is not planning to go to war with Iran. To suggest anything to the contrary is simply wrong, misleading and mischievous. The president and Secretary Gates have repeatedly stated publicly that this county is going to work with allies in the region and address those concerns through diplomatic efforts.”

“We are not planning for a war with Iran,” The new Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, announced on February 2nd.

But that’s only what members of the Bush’s administration say. Some former officials think that there are certainly other sides to the story and think of the republican government’s policy to trap the mullah’s regime.

A former Bush Administration National Security Council official, Flynt Leverett, said that “The Administration is trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq.”

Leverett said. “This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them.”

A former senior intelligence official said: “The White House goal is to build a case that the Iranians have been fomenting the insurgency and they’ve been doing it all along; that Iran is, in fact, supporting the killing of Americans.”

There also seems to be a disagreement within the republicans as well. Bush and some people close to him such as Dick Chenny have proven to be more or less pro-war. That’s while most of the party are seriously against repeating the same mistake they made about Iraq.

George Bush said that “Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We also know that the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. That's a known”

He added: “It has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East. Many of these extremists are known to take direction from the regime in Iran, including the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon.”

On Fox News on January 14th, Dick Cheney warned about “the possibility of a nuclear armed Iran, astride the world’s supply of oil, able to affect adversely the global economy, prepared to use terrorist organizations and/or their nuclear weapons to threaten their neighbors and others around the world. The threat Iran represents is growing.”

While all the blames are on George Bush and the republicans warmonging policies, most of the US possible future presidents don't seem to be tending to go any softer on the Iran’s issues either.

Presidential candidate, John Edwards, recently told the audience during a speech: “At the top of these threats is Iran. To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep all options on the table. Let me reiterate: all options.”

Another US presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama, said on Friday that “The use of military force should not be taken off the table when dealing with Iran, which is a threat to all of us.”

But in the Senate, on February 14th, said Hilary Clinton in a quite different position to her rivals: “We have all learned lessons from the conflict in Iraq, and we have to apply those lessons to any allegations that are being raised about Iran. Because, Mr. President, what we are hearing has too familiar a ring and we must be on guard that we never again make decisions on the basis of intelligence that turns out to be faulty.”

Iran's Nuclear Drive: A Runaway Train

"Nuclear train of the Iranian nation doesn't have a reverse gear," said Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president last week during a press conference. This statement seemed to have irritated a number of the western governments, and the US government in particular.

But the issue got even worse when he said "Our train doesn't have brakes either, as we dismantled them and threw them away sometime ago," in response to Condoleezza Rice, the US foreign ministry who had suggested him to push the stop button only instead of worrying about going backwards!

Mr. Ahmadinejad keeps making such comments before the international tribunes as the UN Security Council’s 60 day deadline to stop the uranium enrichment was over last week and the 5+1 governments are getting closer and closer to making an agreement about the awfully diverse sanctions they are planning to impose on the Iranian nation, as a result of the hard-liner regime insisting on its nuclear ambitions.

The US vice president, Dick Cheney, warned that it was a "serious mistake" if Iran became a nuclear power, during his visit to Australia last week. But Ahmadinejad keeps calling for further negotiations, saying “the time for bullying has expired."

That is while the US government has specified for many times that it will not go through any negotiations with the Iranians unless they have stopped all of their uranium enrichment activities.

Condoleezza Rice told Fox News Sunday that “Iran needs to stop enriching and reprocessing, and then we can sit down and talk about whatever is on Iran's mind."

"I've said that I am prepared to meet my counterpart or an Iranian representative at any time if Iran will suspend its enrichment and reprocessing activities. That should be a clear signal," she added.

But also on Sunday, Ahmadinejad said Iran would not surrender to what he called "another conspiracy" by the West in the dispute over the controversial atomic programme, the Iranian state television IRIB reported.

"They think they can hurt us economically. Since they have threatened us and issued a resolution against us we have had record contracts. They cannot do anything," Ahmadinejad said.

"Our revolution is going fast towards the summit like a bulldozer. The enemies think they can stop this bulldozer by throwing a few pebbles at it. They then magnify their small pebbles 500 times in psychological warfare,” he continued.

The Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mohammadi, told the ISNA news agency: "We have prepared ourselves for any situation, even if war happens," He added that Iran was prepared for talks with the United States but without preconditions.

Basically, what is going on between the US and Iran at the moment, more seems to be like a kind of mutual diplomatic bullying from both sides, who tend to more think about defeating the old enemy rather than their nations' long-term interests.

Among all the countries involved, Great Britain's position seems to be one of the most realistic. The British authorities' statements on this issue have always represented their moderate policies at the interest of both nations. However, being the America's oldest and most powerful ally in the world, they cannot be the most objective referree you can find for this issue. But no matter what, one thing is clear about Great Britain: They are by any means against starting a war on Iran. That is definite.

British Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, said that "Iran had been offered almost everything any country that wanted modern civil nuclear power could ask for."

"No one wants to implement sanctions against Iran. No one wishes to have conflict or is preparing for conflict with Iran. While the door remains open to negotiations for Iran, someone has to walk through that door," Beckett said on Tuesday to a diplomat training college in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

"We are perfectly happy to talk to them. The question is what the conversation is about?" said Tony Blair, the UK Prime Minister, in a reaction to Ahmadinejad’s recent controversial comments on his country’s nuclear program.

He added that "The latest comments from Iran are very worrying because they indicate again they want to defy the international community". Blair insisted that "the tougher we in the international community are, the more likely we are to get the result we want. Any sign of weakness is lethal."

"I think Iran is making a big miscalculation in refusing to suspend enrichment, Tony Blair said today. think the comments from Iran are very worrying because yet again they're indicating they want to defy the international community," he said at his monthly news conference. "I think we've got therefore to consider what more measures we take which we are now doing with our partners," Blair continued.

The researches show that most of the Islamic countries are worries about the recent US-Iran conflict and about the way the US is going to handle this problem in particular. They simply do not want to witness another war in the region, against another powerful Muslim regime.

A recent statement made by Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey suggests that "It is vital that all issues must be resolved through diplomacy and there must be no resort to use of force."