HUMAN RIGHTS IN IRAN AND U.S. POLICY OPTIONS

Transcription

1 HUMAN RIGHTS IN IRAN AND U.S. POLICY OPTIONS National Iranian American Council RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON, D.C. THURSDAY, JULY 26, 2007 TRANSCRIPT PROVIDED BY DC TRANSCRIPTION & MEDIA REPURPOSING SPONSORS: PLOUGHSHARES FUND, PLURALISM FUND, KENBE FOUNDATION AND AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

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3 National Iranian American Council HUMAN RIGHTS IN IRAN AND U.S. POLICY OPTIONS MODERATOR: DR. TRITA PARSI, President National Iranian American Council SPEAKERS: ALEX ARRIAGA, Amnesty International JOE STORK, Human Rights Watch JOHN TIRMAN, MIT Center for International Studies REP. JIM MORAN (D-VA) REP. TOM TANCREDO (R-CO) LAURA SECOR, The New Yorker REP. MIKE HONDA (D-CA)

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5 HUMAN RIGHTS IN IRAN AND U.S. POLICY OPTIONS MR. TRITA PARSI: Welcome to today s conference on the human rights situation in Iran and U.S. policy options. I can t think of a better time to talk about this issue. To just sum it up, over the last couple of weeks three particular developments made us think that it would be extremely important to address this issue. First and foremost, we ve seen a remarkably deteriorating human rights situation in Iran. Large crackdowns on the women s rights movement inside of Iran as well as arrests of ordinary men and women for wearing the wrong type of clothes, and something that has reached a tremendous amount of attention here in the United States: the arrest of four Iranian-Americans with American passports, who are being held without access to their lawyers, without their basic human rights being respected. And yesterday, news came out that the Iranian authorities have also arrested a couple more individuals. They have not revealed who they are, but they are accusing them of being connected to these Iranian Americans. Secondly, in the last couple of years, the human rights situation in Iran has largely been neglected here in Washington. When we talk about Iran in this town, we primarily talk about centrifuges, uranium enrichment, or about the situation in Iraq. But the human rights situation itself has largely fallen into the shadows. And the actions that the United States has taken, which brings us to the third development, is something that is hotly contested. Some very prominent people in Iran human rights activists, famous lawyers such as Shirin Ebadi, Akbar Ganji, and others have been very critical of the approach that the U.S. government has taken towards the human rights situation in Iran. So we wanted to bring the foremost experts on this area to talk about this. But not just to assess the human rights situation, which is extremely important, but also to go one step beyond that and see what is it that the United States can do and what is it that the United States perhaps should not do. I can hardly think of a more competent panel. We have people from Amnesty International, to Human Rights Watch, to independent journalists as well as scholars that have been working very closely with Iranian NGOs. We are very regretful that David Denehy from the State Department, the person who is critical in the Bush administration s human rights and democracy promotion program, unfortunately told us two days ago that he couldn t make it. We have been trying to find someone else from the State Department to come to present the administration s perspective, but we were informed this morning that because this event is on the record and we have media here, that it would perhaps not be suitable. Nevertheless, we re hoping to have a great discussion, and before I go to our first speaker, I would like to also thank our sponsors. These are Congressman Chris Van Hollen, the Kenbe Foundation in New York, the Ploughshares Fund, as well as the Pluralism Fund, and finally, Amnesty International itself. So without any further ado, please let me introduce Alex Arriaga, who is the head of advocacy for Amnesty International and she s going to be talking about the latest developments in Iran. Thank you so much. MS. ALEX ARRIAGA: Thank you very much and thank you for the opportunity to present Amnesty International s account of the human rights situation in Iran. Amnesty has been looking at the situation in Iran for decades, and sadly has concluded that the situation in Iran has deteriorated in recent times. Recently we ve seen in particular that there has been a crackdown on human rights defenders and political prisoners. We ve seen that freedom of expression, association, and religion has been restricted more severely. We ve seen scores of political prisoners that have been not only arrested and detained, but also subjected to unfair trials, and we ve also seen that there have been executions that have been taking place in particular the death penalty, which Amnesty opposes under all circumstances. But what we ve 1

6 The National Iranian American Council seen in Iran which is especially disturbing is that there are executions of child offenders and also that the type of punishment that is being carried out is executions including stoning. These are all of major concern. In addition, we have seen that women in particular are facing increasing searches, arrests, intimidation, harassment for their activities, as well as ethnic and religious minorities who have for a long time suffered under the Iranian regime and continue to suffer now as well. So for all of these reasons, Amnesty has concluded that the situation of human rights in Iran has deteriorated. We have applauded the human rights defenders that continue to work under extremely difficult circumstances with enormous courage, and yet they are subject to harassment, imprisonment and other kinds of abuses by security authorities who are able to act with complete impunity. Despite this abysmal record, the Iranian government in particular continues to deny that there have been rights violations and instead has chosen to silence and bully those who attempt to challenge or publicize the violations. I would like to focus on four areas particularly. There are many that I could have focused on, but the four areas are first the abuses against political prisoners and human rights defenders. The second is the crackdown on women s human rights activists. The third is violations against religious and ethnic minorities. And the fourth is the death penalty, in particularly the areas that I have mentioned. Let me just begin by saying that I think that first and foremost on the minds of everyone here are the situation for four individuals that have been mentioned at the start, in particular Haleh Esfandiari, a Woodrow Wilson Center scholar. This is a case that Amnesty has worked with many of you to try to address in addition to the case of Kian Tajbakhsh from the Open Society Institute, Parnaz Azima from Radio Farda, and Ali Shakeri, peace activist and professor at UC Irvine. All of these individuals are Iranian and American nationals, all of them are individuals that Amnesty has urged to be released. We believe that there is no reason for them to be detained. They have been formally charged by the Iranian government as you may know with quote acting against the state security by engaging in propaganda and espionage for foreigners. Amnesty International believes that these arrests demonstrate the growing willingness of the Iranian government to detain anyone who dissents from their views on charges of espionage, which is completely unfounded. In the case of Haleh and Kian, they were paraded on Iranian television and were forced to confess. We believe that they were coerced to confess and that this in and of itself constitutes violations of human rights. Haleh has hired Shirin Ebadi to be her lawyer and Shirin Ebadi has been denied access to her client. She has also been unable to meet with the Iranian prosecutor, being told that Ms. Esfandiari does not need a lawyer. Sadly, these cases are not unique. In these cases, our concern is similar to the concerns for many other prisoners in Iran. First and foremost, these individuals must receive access to their family members and to their lawyers. They must be able to have legal representation. They must be able to have a fair proceeding that meets the international standard for justice, and they must also have access to the international monitoring organizations such as the International Red Cross or Red Crescent or organizations such as Amnesty International. But scores of human rights defenders and reformers have been arrested and intimidated in Iran, and many peaceful demonstrations have been suppressed and ended in arrests and incarceration. And particularly, we ve seen recently where school teachers who were demonstrating for higher wages were gathered, arrested, detained, and sorely treated. On another occasion, individuals who were demonstrating for worker rights were also gathered, some of them beaten and arrested. And what we ve seen is that this is a pattern that seems to be intensifying. We looked at 2006 when the Ministry of Interior was reported to be preparing measures to restrict the activities of nongovernmental organizations that allegedly received finance from what they term problematic internal and external sources aimed at overthrowing the system. Since that determination by the Iranian government, many activists have been harassed. It has become a blanket cover in order to be able to arrest anyone who was dissenting or who was challenging the regime. And then of course, those individuals were denied fair trial proceedings. The right to peaceful protest, the right to freedom of expression, the freedom of association; these are basic, 2

7 HUMAN RIGHTS IN IRAN AND U.S. POLICY OPTIONS fundamental human rights. They are enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Iran has ratified and which of course Iran has an obligation to uphold. We re seeing the same thing with journalists. They have been silenced or bullied, and what we are concerned about is that in detention, many individuals face ill treatment and that torture is commonplace. Amnesty International mourned the loss in 2006, for example, of 38-year-old reformer and human rights activist Akbar Mohammadi, who died while in custody. There were calls by medical professionals to have him transferred. Those calls were ignored and he perished, and there are many allegations that we have received of similar fates for other prisoners. As I mentioned, women in particular have come under heavy scrutiny and have been targets in recent times. We ve seen a surge in activity by many in the women s movement in Iran, and that has been in large part what the government has reacted to, but what have they been asking for? In many cases, what the women have been organizing for is a campaign for equality, which was to begin in 2006 in August, where they came together to collect a million signatures from Iranians in support of changes to the laws to end legalized discrimination against women in Iran. Basically, it looks at women s testimonies and tries to put forth the personal stories and cases and exactly why these laws need to be addressed. What we re thinking about here is to make sure that women s testimony in court has the same weight as men, that women have the equal right to inheritance, elimination of polygamy and the equality of compensation payments in the event of wrongful death of a man and a woman. These are merely basic rights. And yet this campaign has come under enormous fire. Its website has been filtered by the Iranian government, the people involved have been harassed and intimidated, and many human rights activist have been increasingly targeted. Earlier this year in April, the minister of intelligence publicly accused the women s movement campaigners of being part of an enemy conspiracy or a soft subversion those were the terms soft subversion of the government of Iran. Many women have been arrested and detained. Sometimes they have been released on bail, but others but now what we are seeing is that there have been announcements about the sentencing of women even while they are out on bail; again, without any fair trials. One new development here is that women s rights advocates have been charged with breaking the national security laws. That is slightly different in the history of Iran s women s movement. And although they have been released, as I said, there have been sentences of up to six months in prison or under suspension under two and a half year sentences. In terms of ethnic and religious minorities, I believe many of us know that many of these minorities have suffered for decades in Iran. Amnesty recently came out with a statement in February, and I ll quote: Amnesty noted that it is greatly concerned by continuing violations of the rights of members of Iran s ethnic minorities, including Iranian Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Baluchis and Arabs. Within the past two weeks, hundreds of Iranian Azerbaijani cultural rights activists have been arrested. Kurdish rights activists have been detained and demonstrators killed or injured; and a Baluchi accused of responsibility for a bomb explosion on February 14 th, 2007, was executed just five days later. We have also deplored the execution of eight Iranian Arabs after trials. There are many others who are at risk of execution after unfair trials and so, again, execution is a final form of punishment and these individuals have never been tried fairly. In addition, religious minorities face discrimination, harassment, and detention because of their faith. The communities of the Baha i and the Sunnis have been frequent and longstanding targets of discrimination. Members of Iran s historic Christian community also face harassment and persecution, and several evangelical Christians, mostly converts from Islam, have faced detention in connection to their faith. Moreover, the rights of Iran s historic Jewish community has come under renewed risk due to polarizing rhetoric by President Ahmadinejad, including when he stated publicly in 2005 his questioning of the Holocaust, and then in 2006 he held a conference where he got together nearly 70 international researchers and writers who argued the absurd position that the Holocaust never occurred or that its extent is grossly exaggerated. 3

8 The National Iranian American Council All of these acts, public statements, and a continuing harassment send the message that freedom of religion is not respected in Iran and that, in fact, you will be persecuted if you dare to practice in a public manner. Amnesty is calling on the government of Iran to uphold once again the international treaty obligations, in particular those on the freedom of religion and belief, and also the rights to economic, and cultural, and social rights that are enshrined in the covenants. Finally, on the death penalty: Iran continues to have one of the very highest rates of executions in the world. Amnesty has reported to date 124 executions since the beginning of And we are concerned that this number might surpass last year s extremely high rate, an official rate of 177 executions. A few recent victims of the use of the death penalty Iran were child offenders, which is in direct contradiction to the UN convention of the rights of a child. The treaty specifically requires that no one should be executed for crimes committed while under the age of 18. And as I stated earlier, Amnesty has expressed its outrage at the reported execution by stoning most recently of Jafar Kiani on July 5 th of this year, and it has noted that there s another pending execution that is under threat that would do the same, in these cases execution by stoning. Amnesty opposes the death penalty in all circumstances, but particularly the use of stoning. It is particularly cruel and inhuman and is in contravention, once again, of international treaties; in this case, the convention against torture and the convention on civil and political rights. We would call on the Iranian government to release the prisoners that are being held because of their expression of their views. We especially call on the Iranian government to release the four individuals that are being held right now the dual-nationals. There is no reason for their detention and they must be released. We would also call on them to ensure that the individuals have access to their lawyers, that they have access to their families, that human rights monitoring organizations have access to them, that they be treated humanly, and that their treatment as far as proceedings is fair. Women should not be subject to discrimination and especially discrimination in law and practice. We re asking that the intimidation of the advocates must stop, and in fact we would call on the Iranian government not only to reverse the laws that they ve placed that cause the discrimination, but to ratify the International Treaty for the Rights of Women. Finally, Iranian authorities have had a long time to address the issues for ethnic and religious minorities, and it s time for them to do so to join those that look at the international treaties and uphold the freedoms of expression and of religion. Also we would call on Iran to return to a moratorium, if not to abolish the death penalty, and certainly to end the execution of child offenders and also to end the use of stoning. Thank you very much. MR. PARSI: Thank you so much, Alex. That was indeed a sober description of what is taking place in Iran that for too long I think has been neglected. Our next speaker Joe Stork is from Human Rights Watch. He s the deputy director of Middle East and North Africa Division at Human Rights Watch, and he s also the cofounder of Middle East Research and Information Project, MERIP, and was from 1971 to 1995 a chief editor of its bi-monthly magazine. MR. JOE STORK: Well, speaking out about human rights abuses, whether in Iran or anywhere else, is certainly laudable. There s one caveat, though; namely, the double standards. Not that there has to be exactly the same approach for every country where serious abuses take place, but there has to be consistency. To articulate and underscore abuses only in adversary countries undermines the possibilities for human rights improvement across the board, including, again, your adversaries. The problem in the Iran case is policy; namely, regime change. Put aside the issue of military action, which most prominent Iranian human rights advocates oppose. Now the real issue I think is the policy of regime 4

9 HUMAN RIGHTS IN IRAN AND U.S. POLICY OPTIONS change more broadly, even with friendly governments. Take Egypt as an example. U.S. support for human rights improvements triggers a government response and usually some high-profile swat at local human rights activists. Think back to the arrest of Saed Ibrahim. The message is, don t think your American passport or your friends in high places can protect you, and we know what message this sends to all the other human rights activists who don t have that protection. This is a response in a friendly country where everyone understands, including the government involved, the goal of U.S. policy is not to change the regime. Au contraire, it s to preserve the regime. Here you have a situation where the express purpose of U.S. pronouncements and funding in the name of human rights is just to change the government. Now, as a human rights organization, Human Rights Watch does not address the political context, so we don t comment, for instance, on the issue of Iran s nuclear ambitions or the efforts of U.S. and others to curtail those alleged ambitions. We also know that Washington s goal of regime change and the various economic and other sanctions that it s placed on Iran do not derive from the stated concern about human rights. So as an organization we don t address the policy of regime change. We do address the consequences of that policy, the human rights consequences. We re concerned about those consequences for human rights activists in Iran, particularly policies the United States takes in the name of promoting human rights. So let me say a few words about the famous, or should I say notorious, $75 million. The lion s share of this appropriations request by the government of the Bush administration, namely, $55 million, is for pumping up electronic media and U.S. government broadcasting efforts. The idea, as expressed by Under Secretary Nick Burns, is a bit patronizing. And I quote: Increase the understanding of rights and responsibility of a citizen of a democracy through written publications and new technologies, end quote. I mean, Iranian students, intellectuals, journalists, human rights activists I think have been showing us how to use this technology. But anyway, put that aside. In and of itself, there s nothing objectionable to this feature, although it s worth noting that the Pentagon s Iran Directorate yes, that s what they call it, the Iran directorate has complained that broadcasts aren t strong enough, which apparently means they re not forthright enough. Another $5 million of this package is earmarked for student and other international exchanges. The most problematic use of the showering of greenbacks is the $25 million that s including $15 million and another $10 million that Congress itself had already appropriated quote, to empower local activists and thus further human rights, end quote. Again, there s a patronizing dimension. Quote: help Iranians acquire skills in citizenry and advocacy, end quote. But the kicker is this part. Again citing the words of Undersecretary Burns, quote support alternative political centers of gravity. Now, in the context of less euphemistic pronouncements and programs of other U.S. government agencies, such as the classified research project in the intelligence community of the US marines to grow, quote the defiant nature of the nation s ethnic minorities, unquote. Is it any wonder that Iranian activists, the presumed beneficiaries of this largesse, have described this program as painting a target on their backs? This problem is compounded when the State Department in early June put out a so-called fact sheet claiming that the U.S. funding, quote: supports those inside Iran who desire their basic civil liberties, end quote. In fact, no U.S. funding has gone to activists in Iran, at least in part because of the dissidents and activists refusal to accept it. So at the end of the day, we all know it is Iranians who will bring about human rights changes in that country. There are ways to help them, but these aspects of the administration s policy, more likely to at worst sabotage or at best delay those desired changes. Is this deliberate? I think what s going on here is the same kind of subordination of human rights concerns by U.S. policy makers to other interests that we see in other countries. The audience for the announcements I ve quoted from today are not Iranians primarily, they are people in Congress, in the policy community, people who ask, What are you doing about Iran? or complaining that you re, the Bush administration, of not doing enough. We ve seen that in the context of U.S.-Iranian relations this kind of policy; namely, this $15 million aspect of it, really amounts I think to nothing less than reckless endangerment of the very people the administration purports to support. 5

10 The National Iranian American Council So what should we do? What should the United States government not do? As I said at the outset, continue to speak up about human rights abuses, but don t restrict it only to Iran. Beyond this, in the context of no economic or diplomatic relations with Iran, there aren t a whole lot of levers the U.S. can use. Does this mean we should advocate for some sort of the resumption of relations or resumption of a dialogue? The reason there is no dialogue and no relations has little if anything to do with human rights. For that reason, as a human rights organization, we would not say that there should be a dialogue or there should not be a dialogue. But we can say to the extent that human rights really are a concern, a serious concern, then developing other tools is probably a good idea. For the moment, let s go back to first principles: do no harm. MR. PARSI: Thank you so much, Joe. I m going to get back to you during the Q&A session. I think there s going to be a lot of questions on this. Our next speaker is John Tirman the executive director of MIT Center for International Studies. Prior to this appointment, he was here in Washington as the Program Director at the Social Science Research Council. MR. JOHN TIRMAN: Thank you for the invitation to be here and thank you for your interest in coming. I ll speak to three dimensions of the democratic rights issue/human rights issue in Iran, but in all cases I address this somewhat more broadly than what typically is taken up in human rights discourse First, there s a question of what the Iranian state is up to and why on the human rights issue. While it s been said many times, I think it bears repeating that Iran sees itself as repeatedly victimized by the United States. We overthrew Mossadegh, threw our support to the Pahlavi regime, and have participated in the threats and isolation it now endures. The Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s took an enormous toll and is viewed in Tehran as partly an American enterprise, and at least in the latter stages of the conflict their perception is partly correct. Not long after that war ended, a series of economic sanctions that tightened the stranglehold on Iran, from which it experiences considerable pain. Post-9/11 actions of the United States in the region thus far end up looking in Tehran like American military encirclement. Causes for the bilateral animus are well known. Less well known are the small steps taken since Khomeini s death to improve relations. This included what Tehran probably thought was a quid pro quo during the Bush 41 administration for some reciprocal good will after Rafsanjani helped get hostages in Beirut released. No such gesture ever followed from Washington. What did occur some years later were sanctions and money from the Republican Congress for overthrowing the regime. When Khatami became president, a few entreaties began again, but were laced with old grievances from both sides. But there was a genuine cooperation on the opening stages of the Afghanistan operation in Remember, Iran had housed 2 million Afghan refugees for many years. Another rapprochement seemed possible from the Bonn conference in December of that year. It was answered by the Axis of Evil speech a few weeks later. And now, the famous 2003 letter suggesting a grand bargain from Iran, and approved by the supreme leader Khamenei, was not only rebuffed in the Bush administration, but ignored. The causes for American antipathies also appear skewed in Iran. Support for terrorism in Lebanon and Israel and Palestine the U.S. also has some blood on its hands in that arena and others. Nuclear weapons: the United States is also in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty; it is happily doing business with proliferators like Israel, Pakistan, and India. Mischief in Iraq: whatever Iran is doing there to support violent actors pales besides our laying waste to that country, with hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead. Even on the issue of human rights, Iran remembers the overthrow of Mossadegh like it was yesterday. This is not a brief for Iran, but a way of looking through their lens. They re besieged by U.S. hostilities seemingly unrelieved hostility, and hypocrisy. Suspicions run very deep. When an elite that is significantly detached from global institutions, commerce, and society is under this kind of stress, the tendency is to raise the drawbridge and round up the usual suspects. That the economic situation is so perilous in Iran is another major source of 6

11 HUMAN RIGHTS IN IRAN AND U.S. POLICY OPTIONS tension, and it is also creating a reaction a diversion, in effect to issues of social norms, observance, and class cleavages. The resort to heightened national security vigilance mixed with xenophobia and protests of lifestyle choices is a combination very familiar to the American scene as well. So while we may not sympathize with the reactions to these pressures in Iran, we should at least understand them. They are no worse than many places we completely ignore, or largely tolerate. And there is democratic practice in Iran than remains remarkably robust even amidst all this tumult. A second point to be made here regards the U.S. Government reaction to the human rights situation. If, as I suggest, the heightened security wariness of the Iranian state is occasioned at least in significant part by perceptions of U.S. intentions, then some assurances would seem to be in order. I worry much less about the famous, or infamous, $75 million for civil society, which is well within the Wilsonian tradition of liberal internationalism, than I do about the threats of regime change by force that is often muttered under the breath of several U.S. officials and indeed many Democratic party politicians, too. Bashing Iran is a free card in American politics, and everyone feels entitled to play. But words have consequences, and the words of a Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton carry weight that is only slightly less significant than that of the current administration because it reinforces the notion that American policy is all of one piece. The threats do not come in direct response to the civil liberties situation; rights abuses are, however, an oftcited part of a larger bundle of complaints about Iran. But the connection between the threats and the human rights abuses is rather direct. Anyone and everyone connected to America is suspect, because the U.S. has declared itself essentially at war with Iran. That is why the $75 million is so problematical, because it is seen as part of a larger plan, already underway, to overthrow the Islamic Republic. This is not merely difficult for activists and others inside Iran. It is also dangerous. A few missteps and the Bush administration may be enticed to begin airstrikes, not just to set back the nuclear program, but to bring down the regime. The results of this would, among many ill effects, be most hurtful to human rights activists in Iran and the near-term possibility of stability in Iraq as well. And this is my third point. We often hear that the U.S.-Iran confrontation is a new Cold War. It is not, and the differences are significant. Iran does not have much military capacity, unlike the USSR, which may be one reason for Iran s nuclear development program. It is parity and respect on the cheap. More important, the U.S.-Soviet competition was a highly formalized affair, with a large number and variety of institutions and norms to keep it from spinning out of control treaties, multilateral and bilateral organizations, commerce and trade, academic and scientific exchanges, and so on. These institutions and norms were nested in many locales in each country several state institutions (foreign office, defense establishment, executive), as well as academic institutions, party institutions, the news media, and civil society. All acted to moderate the conflict, in effect, and to counterbalance the occasional incendiary incident or bad actor. The effect of this thick web of political, scientific, and social relationships was exceptionally powerful. Even on human rights, the USSR felt compelled to moderate its behavior after the Helsinki Accords were in force, due to Soviet commitment to international norms and institutions, their need for legitimacy, and to satisfy other national interests. When the end came, it came very swiftly and peacefully, in large measure because these institutions and norms had long been accepted. No such system of institutions and norms govern or guide the U.S.-Iran competition. We have purposefully excluded Iran from the international community and its normative framework and processes, labeling Iran instead a pariah, rogue, or terrorist regime. The absence of formal ties, commerce, and other kinds of exchange has rendered Iran opaque to Americans, and that opacity is reciprocal. This is a perilous situation. One misstep can lead to war, with all its catastrophic consequences for human security. So while it seems improbable that war is on the agenda of the U.S. decision makers, events can take over, not least events engineered by those in Iran who wish to see the U.S. further humiliated in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regardless of provocations or the weakened U.S. position in the region, we need to recognize that the 28-year policies of strangulation and intimidation have not worked. The withholding of good will and normal relations, 7

12 The National Iranian American Council for many who are in power in Iran, is not a penalty but a blessing: Rapprochement itself is suspect because the accommodat-ionism of the Khatami years, and to a lesser degree the Rafsanjani years, brought nothing but sanctions and axis of evil rhetoric. The insularity this has bred makes the hardest of the hardliners impervious to many of the sticks and carrots the international community uses. As a result, more tough talk and mild incentives seem very unlikely to work. So it is worthwhile to consider something very different talking to Iran directly about the nuclear program and security perceptions, and tangible steps toward ending sanctions together might produce very pleasing results, empowering moderates by dissolving the war clouds and demonstrating that dealing with the U.S. and the values we care to represent are not mortal threats to national survival. An additional set of actions which would be multilateral would be to include Iran gradually in many international institutions, some for trade, some for security, some for scientific exchange, so this is surely a laudable idea based on experience with many nations. How such steps are put together is for a different discussion, but we need to recognize that the absence of negotiations, in the absence of including Iran in the international community, all its misbehavior or perceived misbehavior cannot produce a satisfying outcome. Punitive economic actions tend to undermine those who are most likely to want to have better international relationships. Avoiding war, hostility, and isolation are the first orders of business. The future of human and democratic rights in Iran, I expect, would then be for Iranians to decide in an atmosphere of greater security and normalcy. That is very likely to be good for nearly everyone. Thank you. MR. PARSI: We have a little surprise for you. We have a guest appearance by Congressman Jim Moran from Virginia, who is no stranger to the human rights community. He had a critical role in bringing attention to the arrests of the four Iranian-Americans and also played a key role in making sure that Congress expressed its opinion about these arrests and condemned them. REP. JIM MORAN (D-VA): Thank you very much. Holy smokes, John! You look like a mild-mannered guy (laughter) from the halls of academia. That was tough stuff, and it was wonderful and it was right on. I wish you were in the Congress. Holy smokes, that was good. It makes so much sense. And I d love to identify myself with a much more articulate spokesperson. It s nice to be invited. It s also nice to see the former executive director of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus here. Have you spoken? That s why I m here. I mean, no offense Trita, but that s why I came (laughter.) I am incensed by what has happened to Haleh Esfandiari. A 67-year old grandmother visiting her 93-year old mother and she gets thrown into prison. In fact in one of the more notorious places where there is no semblance of any kind of human rights. We have very little to stand on these days in terms of the enforcement of international codes of conduct, particularly in the house of detention. But the point is this was a reflection of the utter lack of courage and conscience on the part of the current Iranian leadership. It s inexcusable and it shows how isolated Tehran has become. But the main thing I think we have to bear in mind is that President Ahmadinejad is not the real decision maker. The Iranian regime is far more powerful than that figurehead who was elected on the basis of domestic economic reform who found that he was another failure at economic reform, not dissimilar, incidentally, to the 8

13 HUMAN RIGHTS IN IRAN AND U.S. POLICY OPTIONS situation we ve experienced in this country. And, of course, we played right into his hands. But he s not the people we really need to deal with. The people we need to deal with are behind the scene, both people who purport the religious community and who control the military. But I don t think that they represent the vast majority of Iranians. And we know so little about them. The one thing we don t even recognize is that only about half of the Iranian population is Persian. We look at the nation of Iran in a monolithic way this is typical. And we try to demonize individuals and invariably they play out their role as chosen from some cast of characters. Hello Mr. Tancredo. Hello. (Laughter.) But and so Ahmadinejad says all the things that he would want to say but of course it s designed to incense the American leadership. It doesn t matter. It shouldn t matter, because what matters is that Iran is a nation that one day will play a major role on the world stage, a nation that cannot be ignored, a nation that must be incorporated into the league of democratic, progressive nations. For one thing, they are sitting on enormous amount of oil. They can t use it because they are pretty inept in their distribution and refining system, but it s potentially a very wealthy nation and a nation that is primarily young. And those young people thirst for an opportunity to enter the 21 st century. And let me just use a small anecdotal example, one that you would probably not be aware of. In the Library of Congress we have a website and they have lots of things, primarily in English, secondarily in Spanish. Guess what is the third language that represents the most clicks? A very small portion of the world s population, but an enormous proportion of those who choose to access the internet and choose to access America s Library of Congress. The third most used language is Persian. That s kind of unbelievable. (Laughter). That s just unbelievable because it s a small share of the world s population. But doesn t that tell us something? I think it tells us a lot. And it tells us that this is a nation that we need to be providing opportunities for. We need to stop this rhetoric about going to the war, about making them pay a price, and about leveling the kind of sanctions that are supposed to take them to their knees, because all we do is what we ve done with Cuba and any number of other countries. Castro is there because of Batista and Florida. No offense, Tom, because I think you knew both of them, but that s what we ve done. And we re doing the same thing with the Iranian regime. That legislation is going to come before us and I think it s going to pass overwhelmingly, and it would be so much more controversial if it wasn t for Iran s counterproductive decisions. I m not going to say anything more because John has just been on and he said what needed to be said. I d be happy to try to respond to any questions. Thank you. MR. PARSI: Thank you so much, Congressman. Boy, are you guys lucky because we actually have yet another member of Congress that has showed up and would like to share some of his views on this matter. And I suspect they might actually be somewhat of a different perspective, and we very much welcome that. Congressman Tancredo, please. REP. TOM TANCREDO (R-CO): Well, thank you. And I don t know that it would be terribly different in terms of perspective from what my colleague has just said. In some respects, yes. I do believe that perhaps a more 9

14 The National Iranian American Council aggressive posture on the part of the United States is warranted considering Iran s actions and considering the distinct possibility that if a guy who believes that he is responsible for the return of the 12 th Imam and of course there are all kinds of catastrophic events that are supposed to occur in that process. So, yes, I am a little more concerned, I think we should take perhaps a more aggressive posture than was just suggested. However, I must tell you I believe the administration s response at this point in time has been less than stellar and certainly nothing that I can get exited about and it s caused the situation that I am quite concerned about. To a certain extent, of course, it is a result of the problems we are having in Iraq, the lack of support of the American people in terms of that engagement, and therefore a lack of willingness to step forward and follow this administration into some other type of crisis situation and engagement of that scale in another country in the Middle East. I saw something that really was quite disconcerting a while back. There was a significant number of people in this country that actually believe that the government of the United States is in the process of concocting some sort of an event that would occur here in the United States and that we could then blame it on some sort of terrorist only to continue this, quote, war on terror. Of course, I think it s a misnomer entirely. This is a war against radical Islam. When you call it a war on terror it makes it much more difficult and confusing. It paints an amorphous picture of exactly whom we are fighting. But this is the situation we are in today. People actually believe that, and believe that therefore we are in the process of constructing this confrontation with Iran that it s all happening because we want to divert attention away from other issues. Or it s happing because there is still little confidence in the government and the administration. And that is what is very disconcerting to me: that people believe this, and that, therefore, it is very difficult to do something about what I agree is a real problem and real threat. I agree, by the way, with my colleague entirely in terms of the way it should be handled and especially the fact that there is a significant part of the population inside Iran that we can look to for support in terms of a desire to change the structure of the regime inside their own country. I was intrigued. I was sitting here and had to leave, but I was intrigued to hear Joe s statement a little bit ago about the fact that we have put a, quote, target on the backs of people in Iran who would have otherwise been and still probably are willing to help change the regime, but are fearful that our statements about support for them has made it much more difficult to do exactly that. And I think that s probably an accurate assumption to make. I do not have information. I was just an observer, and listening as everybody else here was and I thought that was a very cogent point. But it does leave you sort of wondering about exactly how you should go about doing this thing. I mean, what are your options? What are you going to do? Do you engage with a country in dialogue? Sure. I mean that s been said many times in the past that you should never fear to get into a dialogue and you should never, however, get into it out of fear. And I think these are wise words. In the end result of any negotiations with Iran, we have to have a sense that we are both heading toward the same thing. But it is a challenge of enormous proportion. It requires a delicacy that in terms of the State Department s ability to negotiate issues in diplomacy that I m not sure exactly exists there. But I, nonetheless, want to actually, certainly, congratulate you for holding this forum where these issues can be thoroughly discussed, and I find it quite enlightening and I appreciate the opportunity it gives me to just say a few words about this and we ll return it to the folks who have a much greater command of the issues. Thank you very much. MR. PARSI: Thank you so much Congressman. Finally, we have Laura Secor, an outstanding journalist and former op-ed editor at the New York Times. She s written some quite terrific articles about Iran, precisely because 10

15 HUMAN RIGHTS IN IRAN AND U.S. POLICY OPTIONS she s had access to Iran, traveling there, talking to people and then being able to convey their extremely important perspectives. Laura, I m so sorry you had to wait. with the United States. MS. LAURA SECOR: Thank you. When we speak about Iran, the term paradox has become a cliché. The first time I sat down to write about the place, fully resolved not to resort to the language of paradox and duality, I understood why such terms had become so overused. For one thing, they re easy shorthand for complexity, for multiplicity and as anyone who has visited Iran or made a study of Iranian culture, politics, history or society well knows, Iran has complexity in spades. For another, duality is a nearly inescapable feature of life under repression, just as it characterizes societies torn between tradition and modernity. Both conditions hold in Iran. And both are relevant to the Iranian relationship So at the usual risk of oversimplifying, I offer you this paradox one American policy-makers have been chewing on for almost a decade. In the Muslim world, the United States has few avowed enemies as implacable as the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It has even fewer friends as enthusiastic as Iran s people. As reporters who travel to Iran continually marvel, Iranians, particularly the young people who have known only the Islamic Republic, fetishize American popular culture, clamor to meet American travelers, model their political aspirations on American democracy and dream of immigrating to American shores. It is their government that preaches anti-americanism, and a great many of these people oppose their government. This could be dismissed as a trivial phenomenon, a sort of rebellious fad. And in many quarters, that s what it might be. The attraction to America can even be fraught with resentment It s an upside-down love, one student activist in Tehran once explained to me. But it coincides with another phenomenon that is very serious indeed, and that is Iran s possession of a secular, democratic opposition movement with deep, indigenous roots and widespread popular support. We are not talking about a smattering of Western-educated, urban elites running isolated NGOs. One thing I have found very striking when I talk to the young generation of political activists Iranians in their 20s and 30s who have risked their lives and done prison time for their activities as student organizers or journalists is that almost none of them come from Tehran s disaffected, Westward-looking, pre-revolutionary upper middle class. Those young people have largely retreated into the art scene, the party scene, dreams of emigration. A great many young activists instead come from highly traditional families in the hinterlands. They are in some ways the same demographic that mobilized behind Khomeini in 1979 and that is mobilizing behind Islamist movements elsewhere in the Muslim world today. But their historical experience has led them to a different place. We are talking about a movement that has evolved from the revolutionary movement itself, through the experiment of Islamic reform, into a call for human rights and liberal values that draws on both Iranian and Western traditions of thought. It is a movement spanning two generations, between which there are sharp differences over strategies and goals. Its veterans are hashing out those differences every day. This summer, as you know from media reports and the other presenters on this panel, they do so in an environment of menace, of crackdown and fear. So, getting back to our paradox, this would seem to be a highly exploitable situation for American policy makers. All we need to do, the thinking goes, is to provide Iranian activists with the cash and the know-how, and they can topple for us this regime that is both their enemy and ours. But there are a number of problems with this scenario. First, I for one seriously doubt that the Iranian 11

16 The National Iranian American Council opposition wants for American cash or know-how. What it needs is unity and a new strategy, and neither of these things can be bought or provided by an outside power. Both require a deep knowledge of the Iranian context knowledge of the sort one acquires through struggle in one s own country. The Iranian opposition has already proved itself to be resourceful, courageous and committed. It has fallen on difficult times, and we are tempted to think that we can hasten a happy outcome with good intentions and American dollars, but these contributions will not produce consensus, legitimacy, or a course of action judiciously adapted to the complex conditions in a country to which United States diplomatic and intelligence services have next to no access. Second, and most important, the United States has already scuttled its own efforts by making grandiose announcements about its intentions. Here we are, Iran s enemy number one, which has already proclaimed Iran part of an axis of evil, and which has made clear its desire to change the Iranian regime, and we announce that we will be distributing $75 million to the country s opposition and establishing the equivalent of Riga Station in Dubai. Not surprisingly, the Islamic Republic scored an enormous propaganda victory with this against the very opposition we pledged to help. This is a regime founded on anti-americanism, one that is paranoid, opportunistic and savvy, and whose favorite unfalsifiable charge against dissidents is of espionage. It is a country where speaking with Western journalists can, at the government s whim, be prosecuted as a crime. How easy it is now for the Islamic Republic to denounce its detractors as foreign agents, and to charge them with participating in an American plot to undermine the Iranian state through its civil society. The recently released videotapes of the so-called confessions of Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh, intercut with images from the colored revolutions in the former Eastern bloc, make precisely this connection, based on the stated intentions of the American government. To be clear, the Iranian government had initiated a crackdown on civil society in 2004, well before the $75 million disbursement was announced. It has detained, harassed and assassinated dissidents as long as it has been in power. These tactics are not incidental; they are not reactions to external stimuli; they are systematic, and deeply embedded in the Islamic Republic s strategy of survival. The American ham-handedness in announcing this program did not bring about Iranian repression. But it played into its hands, furnishing a particularly potent weapon with which to beat the very oppositionists we meant to help. And it stoked the paranoia of a regime already nervous about its stability, quite possibly inspiring some arrests and interrogations that would not otherwise have seemed fruitful. By all accounts, detained dissidents are interrogated first and most intensively about United States State Department funds. I can imagine no purpose other than a domestic political one in making this disbursement public. As one exasperated Iranian recently said to me, the best way to bring about regime change in Iran is to stop talking about regime change. An Iranian activist I met with in Tehran implored me to bring the following message home to my government: Please stop declaring your solidarity with us. (Laughter.) We have nothing against your ideology, he told me. We hate this system ourselves. But we know how to do it. His view has been echoed by a wide array of prominent Iranian activists, including Akbar Ganji, Shirin Ebadi, and Emad Baghi. We need to listen to these people. The Iranian activists I ve met with have, to a one, been very explicit: they want the moral support of their peers in American civil society. They want visas to travel here. They want open channels of communication, at the cultural level. They have no objection to the American investment in Farsi-language media that reaches Iran. Many of them like for the American government to take a rhetorical hard line on human rights. But they do not want material or logistical support from the American government still less, for the American government to announce that it s providing such support, which it now makes little difference if the activists refuse, for they are all under suspicion of having accepted it. Any American citizen who has traveled in Iran can t help but know how sensitive the situation is. In Iran, ordinary people come under suspicion if they have excessive contact with foreigners. American visitors, in particular, are kept under surveillance and normally forbidden to stay in the private homes of Iranian friends. The most innocent of relationships with the United States and its citizens can cause problems for Iranians. The United States needs to be sensitive to that reality, and to take its cues from the Iranians themselves. 12

17 HUMAN RIGHTS IN IRAN AND U.S. POLICY OPTIONS Last week, a rather brilliant Iranian friend, who has been in this country not even three months, sat me down and offered to explain what he felt I needed to know about the Iranian mentality, if such a thing can be said to exist in a country of such a dizzying multiplicity of views and experiences. You will notice three tendencies of mind that are common among our people, he asserted. First, we are binary thinkers. Where you find one concept in Iranian thought, you will most often find its opposite. Second, we are utopian thinkers. In the past, the utopia we dreamt of was Europe; today it is America. And third, we are terrible exaggerators. You will find three themes running through Iranian history and intellectual life, he went on to tell me. The first is the tension between love of the West and fear of the West. The second, between evolution and revolution. The third is the fear of being left behind. There they were again: paradoxes, dualities yes, binary thinking maddening complexities. His is the best description I have heard to date of the incentives and inner conflicts of the Iranian movement for democratic change. It speaks, to me, not of a program in need of a sponsor, but of a process historical, social, political; deep, wide and entirely Iran s own. It s for us to watch this process unfold, to see how it resolves its contradictory impulses and builds on Iran s rich intellectual and political traditions to foster a better life for its people. This is an epic struggle, one invested with no small measure of heroism. But that struggle, and its heroics, are not ours. They belong to the Iranians. MR. PARSI: Thank you very much, Laura. I ll use the prerogative of the chair to ask the first question. I m going to direct it to our friends from the Human Rights community. We heard the idea that the United States should be very careful not to do harm to the people it seeks to help, but there s a great challenge in the sense that here in Congress it s extremely difficult to tell members of the Congress not to do anything. Here, there is always the sense that we have to do something. So if the idea is to make sure if you don t do any damage, but you still do something, what can the United States do? And let me share with you something to show the severity of the situation. Two days ago, Omid Memarian published an interview with Shirin Ebadi in which she discussed the oneminute phone calls that Haleh Esfandari was able to make to her grandmother. Her message was clear: rescue me. So how s that done? MR. STORK: There may be times when we can t do anything we re just so powerful and [we ve] positioned ourselves in a way that now we re in a situation where, as a government, there s little we can do. We can speak on their behalf, that does establish important principles of a solidarity with the intent of getting Haleh and the others out of prison. I think probably the United States government is one of the least well positioned in the world today to be able to do that. And I think that at the very least what I would like to see happen, to the extent that it hasn t happened within the Congress and in other bodies in this country, is some reflection about how we got to this state where we are, despite our power. I m not just talking about military power. I m talking about moral power, too, where that has become so hamstrung. How can we correct that problem. I don t see it as a quick fix, so I don t have the silver bullet to suggest what the United States government or the United States Congress should do that will have Haleh back home here next week. I don t have an answer for that. I m sorry. MS. ARRIAGA: The only thing I would add is that I agree that the United States is not best positioned to have a great impact here, and in fact the more the United States does in some ways, the more the Iranians react in this way. But in the case of Amnesty International, we re often very careful about how involved we become in Iran because we are perceived as working for the United States at times, which is not case. We don t accept any government funds. We criticize the United States equally. But the point is that we work with other countries and we work with our sections in countries that do have relations with Iran, and I think that that really is where the United States can be most effective by identifying the countries that have the greatest influence in Tehran to take action in the matter. 13

18 The National Iranian American Council MR. PARSI: Thank you. We are now opening it to questions from the floor. We re going to start with the media. Q: Hi, my name is Mahtab Farid. I m from Radio Farda. (Question Inaudible) MR. MORAN: Well, let me recognize a colleague, Mike Honda from California, in the back row there. Mike, feel free to get up and join us if you would like. First of all, it s absolutely true that Congress needs to do something, but that doesn t mean we have to do something stupid and I do think it s stupid to put money into democracy assistance. That $75 million is interpreted as money to overthrow the existing regime. And anybody that receives it, whether they get it directly or through an NGO, is going to be seen as complicit in this effort to overturn the regime. I don t think that s an intelligent constructive thing to do, but there are and in response to the other question, there are so many backchannels we could employ. First of all, we have to drop the Lone Ranger, cowboy mentality that we have shown, and maybe give somebody else or another nation some credit. There are a lot of nations who are working with Iran that have good relations with Iran and that we also have good relations with. I think under different White House leadership, one of the first things that would be done is to go to a third party to see if they can t work out the release of Ms. Esfandari, and she s not the only one. It should be a release of all of prisoners, but also over time, it seems to me that the objectives of democracy assistance, many of which are noble, obviously, can be accomplished, again, through thirdparty efforts, international efforts through the NGOs. But not direct U.S. government appropriations. There are other ways of doing it through international bodies. Do you agree, Mike? REP. MIKE HONDA (D-CA): Thank you for having me. I just dropped by because I knew you were all here. Just very quickly, I don t know what the Congress should do, given our record. (Laughter.) The idea of what congress people can do on an individual basis one of these efforts we re trying in our own community is to create a dialogue between our office and the Iranian-American community in order to get some policy recommendations and to hear from the community itself. So they started the initiative and contacted our office and it s been very enlightening. It s been helpful and it s kept me from moving with the crowd. You know, sometimes we move with the crowd and they ve been very good at educating me as to recognize certain kinds of misinformation. And so and they re also helping me understand that in this society there is a history there of democracy and there s a critical mass of people around that can move against you if you make the wrong move in terms of using terminologies like the regime. I didn t vote for the war in Iraq because I didn t have a lot of confidence in the information I got. The information that we need to get from other sources, I view with a very critical eye. So I think that when we talk about sanctions and things like these, these components have to work in the right direction, not the wrong direction, so that s the point where I am at right now. So I appreciate this kind of a conference where people can get together and share information, hear us out and then tell us give us feedback and help us. That s the only way that people like myself are going to learn. We re not experts or anything, but we ve gained more expertise. So that would be my recommendation. Thank you for this opportunity. 14