Don't look away from what's happening in Iran
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During the 12 days of war, more than 700 people were accused of being 'Israeli operatives' and were arrested, according to the state-affiliated Fars News Agency. Human rights groups
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Meanwhile, Iran's parliament has
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It's no surprise that a regime blindsided by a foreign enemy's highly coordinated attacks would now move swiftly to root out what it sees as security threats.
But the regime is not just fighting foreign adversaries. It is using the war as a pretext to crack down on domestic dissent.
Having experienced firsthand the lack of due process and transparency within the Islamic Republic's judicial system, I have no doubt that many innocent people will be punished for crimes they did not commit.
In 2009, after six years of living and working in Iran as a journalist, I was arrested and accused of spying for the United States. My interrogators claimed that the CIA had paid me to use a book I was writing about Iran as a cover for espionage.
'It's not possible you could be conducting so many interviews,' one insisted, 'only for a book.'
Like many Iranian political prisoners, I was held in solitary confinement and subjected to grueling interrogations, unable to inform anyone of my whereabouts. The authorities threatened my loved ones, fabricated evidence, and warned that espionage could result in many years in prison, and even the death penalty.
For decades the regime has accused journalists, civil society leaders, women's rights activists, lawyers, academics, environmentalists, and humanitarian workers of committing crimes against the state — sometimes under a charge of espionage.
During my time in Tehran's notorious
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My own sentence was eight years, but I was lucky. After an
Countless others — especially those without the support of a foreign government or the attention of the international media — have not been so fortunate.
The regime expends enormous resources interrogating citizens, monitoring internet activity and phone calls, pressuring people to inform on one another, and tailing them in the streets, in cars, even on flights abroad.
'If the system worked well, they would have found the real spies and prevented Israel from doing so much damage,' an Iranian friend told me. 'But instead, the regime took people like you and claimed you were spies.'
Today, many of those being swept up in the regime's dragnet appear to be suffering the same fate. Detainees are being fast-tracked through unfair trials in kangaroo courts without legal representation or due process, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran.
The Iranian regime is responding with repression because 'it knows it won't collapse due to foreign intervention alone,' says Rebin Rahmani, a board member of the Paris-based
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This crackdown, in other words, was predictable.
Afsoon Najafi, whose youngest sister, Hadis, was shot and killed by security forces during nationwide protests in 2022, told me, 'A large percentage of Iranians will again be killed by the Islamic Republic because the regime's agents are full of resentment toward Iranians. And the regime's own agents also know that we know they're scared.'
Regardless of whether US and Iranian officials resume negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, the Trump administration has an opportunity to show that human rights matter, too. That means, among other things, supporting Iranians' access to information — for example, by restoring full funding to Voice of America Persian, a crucial source of uncensored news for millions in Iran.
American citizens can also play a role. By calling their members of Congress and expressing support for measures like the
Steps like those from the American people, even if their message isn't taken up by Congress and the current administration, would still send a clear signal to Iran: Human rights abuses will not be ignored.
When I asked an artist in Tehran what she hoped the world would understand about the Iranian people now that a fragile cease-fire is in place, she said on condition of anonymity, 'I don't know what the people of the world can do, but I want them not to be indifferent to the pain we're enduring.'
'At the very least,' she added, 'let us remain in the news. Let them keep an eye on us.'
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If the world fails to keep an eye on the Iranian people, we risk silently sanctioning yet another chapter of repression in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
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