Berlin.
The brutal violence in Iran is unbearable, says our author. Khamenei belongs on the terror list, and diplomacy is at an end.
The Iranian mullahs’ regime has shown all it has to offer in terms of brutality over the past four months. It has security forces instructed to beat, shoot, hunt. It has ordered countless arrests – of young women, men and even schoolgirls thrown straight from the classroom into jail. It has allowed teenagers to die behind bars, abused, raped.
Officially, 481 people are said to have been killed in protests, including 64 children. The arm of mullahs extends far abroad – even to Germany. And this is also a matter of life and death, as shown by the case of the German-Iranian Jamshid Sharmahd, who was kidnapped by the Iranian secret service in Dubai in 2020 and confessed to “crimes against the Iranian Republic” under torture. He is in solitary confinement and faces the death penalty.
But despite all the violence: The people in the Iran have continued to take to the streets for months, since Jina Mahsa Amini, the young Kurdish woman, lost her life in police custody. Even after the first death sentences imposed for “waging war against God.” And still – albeit more cautiously – after the first executions in December.
Iran: The executions are intended to deter people
There are now four men who have been hanged. According to the Oslo-based organization Iran Human Rights, 109 people are threatened with the execution. In fact, with this brutality, the regime has managed to make people more cautious, act more quietly, and take to the streets less often. But the situation is like that of a volcano that has a loose lid placed on it shortly before it erupts. Also read the comment: Iran – Only a criminal regime kills its own people
All the people demonstrating in Iran and abroad are no longer about that headscarf. They are concerned about their freedom and therefore their lives. They are driven by the feeling that they have nothing left to lose. They want to end violence and discrimination, establish gender equality, anchor human rights.
“Women, life, freedom”: What the motto of the protest movement means for Baerbock
Notice anything? Yes, that’s what the basic principles of a feminist foreign policy sound like, to which the traffic light government also professes. This policy should be the cornerstone that leads to peace and security worldwide. If foreign policy of Germany and by the way also other Western countries like Sweden, France or Spain so obviously agrees with the goal of the protest movement – “women, life, freedom” – then it would only be logical that the federal government should do everything possible to strengthen the movement and the regime drastically to weaken.
So far there has been sharp criticism, but there has been no clear acknowledgment that this is a terror regime headed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme legal scholar, revolutionary leader and, above all, commander-in-chief of the armed forces and the Revolutionary Guards. Khamenei personally belongs on the EU’s terror list, its brutal Revolutionary Guards must be classified as a terrorist organization. More on the subject: What do the exiled Iranians in Germany think about the protests?
The appointment of Iranian ambassador is a start. But it is urgently necessary to examine how far diplomatic relations can be maintained with this dangerous regime. This also includes the nuclear deal: After all, it is also about lifting sanctions, which will benefit the mullahs again. The situation in Iran concerns us all. In the direction of Annalena Baerbock, it should be said: It’s about attitude – about every opportunity to weaken the terror regime. Also interesting: 70-year-old fights for the revolution for the second time
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