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America’s efforts to isolate Iran from the rest of the world amid the pandemic are cruel, as is Iran’s refusal of political prisoners.
By the Editorial Committee
The editorial board is an organization of opinion hounds whose reviews are reported through experience, research, debate and safe values for a long time. It’s separated from the newsroom.
In 2003, when an earthquake killed thousands of people in the Iranian city of Bam, President George W. Bush set aside years of animosity and sent an air bridge of rescuers and medical supplies. It has also temporarily relieved some restrictions on the shipment of medical supplies. “Americans care and we have wonderful compassion for human suffering,” Bush told CNN after the earthquake. “It’s right to take care of other people when they’re suffering. “
This fall, as covid-19’s death toll continues to rise in Iran, the most affected country in the Middle East, Trump’s leadership has shown little mercy. International Monetary Fund to help combat the coronavirus pandemic. With Iran surpassing one million cases and more than 27,000 deaths, the administration is adding new sanctions to a country that already suffers from buying must-have drugs.
Last week, Trump’s management sanctioned 18 Iranian banks, which appear to have been the last monetary establishments with ties to abroad that were not affected by Treasury Department sanctions. The announcement is the latest step in sealing Iran’s economy from the rest of the world. administrations, sanctions opposed to Iranian banks were accompanied by claims that they had helped facilitate terrorism or the progression of nuclear weapons.
Under the Trump administration, being Iranian is a crime that is enough. The list of new monetary outcasts includes Bank Maskan, which specializes in mortgages, and Bank Keshavarzi Iran, which lends to farmers. This incredibly broad application of sanctions amounts to collective punishment for tens of millions of innocent Iranians who are already suffering from a brutally repressive regime. .
Barbara Slavin, director of Iran’s Future Initiative at the Atlantic Council, calls the U. S. crusade of “maximum tension” opposed to Iran “a sadism disguised as foreign policy. “In the past, sanctions against Iranian banks were part of a broader strategy to get Iran to settle for limits on its nuclear program, which took place with U. S. allies in Europe, as well as Russia and China, but Trump’s leadership has renegade the agreement that sanctions have produced. The United States has been virtually alone in the United Nations Security Council seeking to increase pressure on Iran The unilateral and extraterritorial nature of sanctions, which threaten to isolate not only Iran but also any company in the world that does business with Iran. – Infuriates America’s closest allies.
The new sanctions against these 18 banks are a ruthless pandemic. Trump administration officials insist that sanctions, which will take effect in December, do not apply to food and medicine. They also say they have taken the trouble to provide exemptions to corporations that need to sell mandatory materials to the country. But the procedure for approving exemptions is too bulky and too long to satisfy a pandemic’s desire for physical fitness. Even if corporations discharged exemptions to sell mandatory medical supplies to Iran, Iran would still struggle for the country to lack foreign currency because Trump’s management has tried to prevent other countries from buying Iranian products, especially oil, and because U. S. banking sanctions prevent Iran from receiving the export profits it makes.
There is no doubt that this policy has paralyzed the Iranian economy and impoverished its other people with galloping inflation, but it has failed to achieve the ultimate goal of forcing the Iranian government to capitulate to Washington, on the contrary, it has strengthened the hard line in Iran. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps controls the few currencies in the country. Instead of encouraging Iran to become a more guilty and transparent player, this sanctions policy further limits the Iranian economy in the arms of cash launderers, fraudulent companies that are difficult to understand China: it is a policy that generates diminishing returns over time, the heavier the United States, the more appetite there will be in the world for monetary mechanisms of choice that will eventually deprive Washington of its global influence. Officials would be wiser to avoid the application of sanctions opposing Iran in this pandemic.
Iranian officials would also be be be begged to show mercy on the large number of political criminals who are detained at false rates and under threat of coronavirus. The Iranian government has announced the transitional release of more than 85,000 criminals since the start of the pandemic. However, few political criminals have been released. That can change. Last week, Iranian officials took the positive resolution to release Narges Mohammadi, a prominent human rights defender and anti-death penalty activist who has been a criminal since 2015. Mohammadi, who worked as a spokesman for the Center for Human Rights Defenders, a banned organization in Iran, was allegedly commuted to his 10-year criminal conviction on fitness grounds.
Many other political criminals of Iran’s infamous criminal Evin remain imprisoned and in danger. His plight was highlighted through the recent hunger strike through Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who refused to eat for nearly a month to call for the compassionate release of dozens of her victims. human rights defenders and political dissidents. Sotoudeh, who is to blame for not yet protecting an organization of women who took off their veils in public to protest law enforcement, was sentenced to 38 years in prison.
Although Ms. Sotoudeh ended her hunger strike because of her weakness and central problem, her life is still in great danger, her condition is said to be deteriorating rapidly, after a brief stay at the hospital, where she did not get medical care, sent her back to prison, where at least six guards were known to carry the coronavirus , according to an email from Ms. Sotoudeh’s husband.
Because of their inspiring struggle to maintain the rule of law in Iran, others around the world turn to the news to hear their plight. A new film, “Nasrin,” about her fight for women’s rights in Iran will ensure she’s not forgotten.
Ms. Sotoudeh must obtain medical care and humanitarian release. Letting her out, along with other political prisoners, would show that Iran’s leaders are able to withstand a pandemic and that Iran also deserves mercy.
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