Narges Mohammdi has message for Americans

Photo by Reihane Taravati/Courtesy of Narges Mohammadi

Before going back to Iranian prison, she has a message for Americans

The Washington Post-April 6th 2022

Narges Mohammadi, one of Iran’s most influential civil rights activists, is on the verge of being taken to Iran’s notorious Evin Prison. Before she is once again placed behind bars for her advocacy, she has a message for Western leaders as they contemplate next moves in negotiations with the Islamic republic.

At any moment, she will be hauled off to begin an eight-year sentence for supposed crimes against Iran’s national security, charges she says are illegitimate and defy the Islamic republic’s own constitution.

None of this has deterred her.

Despite setbacks to civil society, Mohammadi believes the democratic movement in Iran is as strong as ever, in large part because of the empowerment of women through education, access to better jobs and outreach to communities to modernize archaic practices. But progress has stalled. In fact, it is now facing its greatest threat in a generation, as all branches of the government are coalesced around a group of officials singularly committed to the regime’s most rigid ideals.

Mohammadi believes — as I’ve repeatedly argued in the past — that the approach employed by successive U.S. administrations and our European allies has actually emboldened the Islamic republic’s most repressive elements.

“Economic sanctions, because they weren’t targeted or based on adequate knowledge of the state, weakened Iranians economically more than they weakened the Iranian regime,” she says. “In fact, they strengthened the Iranian regime, and hard-line individuals and groups in the country, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This did not benefit democracy in Iran.”

When then-President Donald Trump decided to pull the United States out of the original international nuclear agreement, all oversight of Iran’s nuclear program was lost, allowing the Islamic republic to barrel forward with its uranium enrichment. Mounting sanctions decimated Iran’s middle class, which is the cradle of civil society in any country, while the blanket travel ban cut off the United States’ ability to engage directly with Iranian civil society, creating ever more gaps in our understanding of Iranians’ everyday struggles.

Read more on the original:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/06/iran-deal-negotiations-narges-mohammadi-prison/