Iranian Republic

Iran’s President-elect Raisi addresses ties to mass executions

Al Jazeera

Tehran, Iran – Iran’s President-elect Ebrahim Raisi has for the first time addressed his links with the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988 when he was deputy prosecutor of Tehran. ...

Iran: Ebrahim Raisi must be investigated for crimes against humanity

Amnesty International

Responding to today’s announcement declaring Ebrahim Raisi as Iran’s next president, Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard said: “That Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency instead of being investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearance and torture, is a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran. In 2018, our organization documented how Ebrahim Raisi had been a member of the ‘death commission’ which forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed in secret thousands of political dissidents in Evin and Gohardasht prisons near Tehran in 1988. The circumstances surrounding the fate of the victims and the whereabouts of their bodies are, to this day, systematically concealed by the Iranian authorities, amounting to ongoing crimes against humanity. ...

The Perils of the Iranian Presidency

By Jay Mens, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa Forum.

Not unlike the wives of Henry VIII, Iran’s presidents rarely have happy endings. The first was assassinated; the second, exiled; the third, now Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, survived; but the fourth, fifth, and sixth have been censured from public life. The same fate seems to await the outgoing seventh. ...

Low election turnout points to larger changes in Iranian politics

By: Ali Afshari

Iran’s presidential election on June 18 is expected to have the lowest turnout of any election to date and the implications are likely to extend far beyond the ballot box. The official voter turnout in post-revolutionary Iranian presidential elections is typically around 50-85%, which is relatively higher than for parliamentary elections. Of course, the official statistics are quite different from the real ones, especially for the elections between 1981 and 1993, but the official data cannot hide the general trends in the electorate’s behavior. The last parliamentary election in 2020 showed a drastic decline in total turnout in 30 out of 31 provinces. According to official numbers from the Ministry of the Interior, turnout was just 42.57%, the lowest of any election in the Islamic Republic’s history. Driving that historic decline was a growing sense among different segments of society that elections do nothing to improve their lives or address the country’s major problems, like strengthening the economy, ending political deadlock and cultural isolation, and empowering civil society to combat corruption and inequality. The bloody suppression of the November 2019 protests and the lack of accountability for the shootdown of Ukraine International Airlines flight 752 deeply affected many Iranians and their willingness to turn out to vote. ...

Chronicle of a Flawed Accord Foretold?

An interview with Ali Afshari

Ali Afshari is an Iranian political analyst and pro-democracy activist. He is a former student leader and member of the Central Committee of the Office for Consolidating Unity, which was the main and largest student organization in Iranian universities during the Reformist era. He received his Ph.D. from George Washington University in systems engineering, working as adjunct faculty member, and contributes regularly on current Iranian political events in Persian- and English-language media outlets. Diwan interviewed him in mid-June to ask him about the ongoing negotiations to revive the nuclear deal with Iran, and the impact this may have on the broader Middle East. ...

Iran: Ukraine Airline Victims’ Families Harassed, Abused

Human Rights Watch

Iranian authorities have engaged in a campaign of harassment and abuse against families of people killed in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 in January 2020, Human Right Watch said today. On April 6, 2021, Iranian authorities announced that they had indicted 10 people for their role in the incident but have not provided any public information about their identities, ranks, or the charges against them. Governments participating in the Flight 752 investigation should support family members of victims in pursuing a path for justice and accountability. ...