Iran Seizes on Western Inattention with New Round of Executions

A fter the Iranian government’s execution of three men last week over their participation in anti-regime demonstrations, human-rights advocates and analysts see a broader crackdown underway, made possible by the West’s flagging interest in the nationwide protest movement.

“Tehran is counting on diminished attention and interest in countering its state-sanctioned violence and use of forced confessions against protestors,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies

On Friday, the Iranian authorities hanged three men, Majid Kazemi, Saleh Mihashemi, and Saeed Yaqoubi, who it claimed had attacked security forces during a protest last November. The move was widely criticized by human-rights groups who characterized the hangings as politically motivated. Hengaw, a human-rights advocacy group focused on Iranian Kurdistan, urged human-rights organizations and western governments to pay closer attention “to the unfathomable wave of executions in Iran.”

As Hengaw’s message suggests, several months out from the brutal murder of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old woman killed in custody of the religious police over her failure to properly wear a headscarf, it seems that many outside observers have moved on, even as the protests sparked by her death continue at a smaller scale.

When the protests began last fall, the regime’s brutal crackdowns were thrust into the headlines and the U.S. and its European allies pivoted to a more hawkish policy that viewed engagement with Tehran as undesirable. The Biden administration, which came to power planning a return to the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, even temporarily shelved that plan. Though U.S. officials never conclusively renounced the idea, they did repeatedly say something to the effect of “it’s not a focus right now.”

But the executions last Friday have put Iran’s dismal human-rights record back at the center of the discussion, with some blaming the U.S. for dropping the ball after initially supporting the protests. “Washington has ample room for improvement here to change the clerical regime’s impression,” Taleblu said.

While Congress has advanced some new legislation — including the MAHSA Act, which sanctions the Iranian supreme leader and his inner circle — and issued statements of support for the protesters, that falls short of steps that lawmakers have taken in the past.

For their part, Biden administration officials spoke out ahead of the executions, condemning the expected killings as an egregious human-rights abuse. Deputy State Department spokesman Vedant Patel slammed the imminent executions as the result of “what have been widely regarded as sham trials” and said that the executions “would be an affront to human rights and basic dignity in Iran and everywhere.” The administration’s top Iran envoy, Robert Malley, issued a similar statement, in which he vowed to coordinate “closely with our allies and partners to expose and confront the Iranian regime’s unremitting human rights abuses.”

But critics allege that the administration’s words don’t match its deeds. A senior GOP staffer said that some in Congress have picked up on a subtle messaging shift from the State Department: Whereas its spokespeople once repeatedly emphasized that the administration does not see itself getting back into the 2015 nuclear deal, they seem now to have dropped that line. Meanwhile, reports indicate that Washington is still eager to ink a new nuclear deal with Tehran, which has prompted critics to claim that the White House needs to get its priorities straight.

“It’s time that Malley be replaced with a fresh face—preferably someone who focuses on an array of issues beyond the nuclear file, that may also speak Persian, and whose reputation isn’t built on the revival of the JCPOA alone,” Holly Dagres, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, wrote in a recent analysis.