John Bird
By: John Bird, Source: Foreignpolicy.com
It has now been one year since Hassan Rouhani was elected president of Iran. Rouhani came into power with big promises -- to tackle entrenched corruption, to grant Iranians basic freedoms, and to unleash the constrained talents and aspirations of Iran's citizens. His very mantra was one of hope and change.
These promises appealed to a wide array of Iran's long-suffering minority groups -- Ahwazi, Baluch, Kurd, Azeri, Christian and Baha'i. And they appealed internationally, where Iran purported to extend the hand of friendship and co-operation, and offered an escape from the downward spiral of zero-sum rivalry and regional turmoil. After the obtuseness of Rouhani's predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, this new language and tone was profoundly seductive to all those who long pined for hope and change in the country.
But one year later, we must be hard-headed, and ask ourselves: who has been accorded the dignity that President Rouhani promised? The honest answer cannot be optimistic. Not the Iranian defense lawyers imprisoned for defending the rights of their fellow citizens. Not the political prisoners beaten bloody by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) forces in Evin Prison's notorious Ward 350. Certainly not Hashem Shaabani, a member of the Ahwazi minority who was arrested, tortured and summarily executed for his poetry.
Indeed, Iranians hoping for moderation were let down almost immediately upon Rouhani taking office. On the day of his inauguration, Rouhani selected Mostafa Pourmohammadi, the former deputy intelligence minister, as his sole nominee for the role of justice minister. Pourmohammadi, as Iranians well know, was one of the key officials responsible for the 1988 massacre of thousands of political prisoners in Iran. Later, in 1994, he was head of foreign counter-intelligence when the government of Iran was implicated in court for the deadly bombing of the Israeli Cultural Center in Argentina.
Now, joined in cabinet by old friends from the MOIS, the new justice minister supervises a legal system that has already put to death at least 470 prisoners since Rouhani's inauguration, earning him the unofficial title of "Minister of Murder."
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