Wanton Executions and Torture: Iran’s Miserable Human-Rights Record

As the U.S. continues to seek a deal with Iran over nuclear weapons, the Iranian regime systematically subjects its own people to horrific abuse. Detailing the scope of that abuse, pursued in flagrant disregard of international norms, Irwin Cotler asks whether it shouldn’t “cause us to question the veracity of any commitments made by” such a regime, let alone entrusting it with nuclear weapons:

[H]uman rights violations in Iran continue unabated—and have even intensified—under the “moderate” President Rouhani. . . .

Iran not only executes more people per-capita than any other state, but the execution rate has actually escalated under President Rouhani, with the UN General Assembly expressing concern about the “alarmingly high frequency” of executions. At present, Iran now executes a person every eight hours, with death sentences carried out for overbroad crimes such as “corruption on earth” and “enmity with God.” Iran has already executed more than 80 people in the first month of January 2015 alone—the largest rate of executions of any month on record.

Read more at Huffington Post

More about: Baha'i, Hassan Rouhani, Human Rights, Iran, Iranian nuclear program, Politics & Current Affairs

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF