The attack on Iran has led to predictable repression and diplomatic collapse. This piece by Simon Tisdall is a powerful summary of the consequences.Originally Posted by stevo
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...uclear-weapons
Hanging is the preferred method of execution in Iran, although stoning and crucifixion offer alternative options for an ever-vengeful theocracy. Death by hanging is not necessarily quick. Strangulation and suffocation can take several minutes. The UN says more than 600 people have been judicially murdered so far this year. Iran has more executions per capita than any country in the world. Since June’s US and Israeli attacks, growing numbers of victims are political dissidents.
Fifty days on, nothing remotely positive has resulted from the illegal bombing raids and missile strikes mounted by the US president, Donald Trump, and Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, despite their boasts of world-changing success. Iran’s nuclear facilities were not obliterated, as Trump claimed. Tehran has not abandoned uranium enrichment. The regime did not fall, despite Netanyahu’s call for an uprising. If anything, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is more defiant. He has since launched a new crackdown on opponents, hence the executions.
Deploring last weekend’s hanging of political prisoners Behrouz Ehsani and Mehdi Hassani, Amnesty International linked their fate to the US-Israeli attacks. Arrested in 2022, the two men were charged with rebellion and “enmity against God”. They were tortured, forced to sign confessions and sentenced last year after a five-minute trial. The decision to execute them now “highlights the authorities’ ruthless use of the death penalty as a tool of political repression in times of national crisis to crush dissent and spread fear”, Amnesty said.
Hundreds have been arrested since June in a regime drive to unmask spies and collaborators, real or imagined. Glaring intelligence failures that, for example, allowed Israel to locate and bomb a national security council meeting, injuring Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, are officially blamed not on gross incompetence but supposed fifth columnists. Iran’s parliament wants to expand use of capital punishment. Up to 60 political prisoners face execution.
This typically harsh reaction by clerical hardliners around Khamenei, and within the judiciary and Revolutionary Guards, comes despite a surge in patriotic sentiment after the attacks, which reportedly killed at least 935 people, mostly civilians, and injured more than 5,000. By intensifying repression, the regime squandered a chance to harness public anger, not least against Britain and European governments that turned a blind eye.
US-Israeli actions have had other far-reaching, negative consequences. The attacks breached the UN charter and international law, as the Brics group of “global south” countries noted. They led Tehran to suspend UN nuclear inspections. They exacerbated US-Europe divisions. And, ironically, they increased the likelihood of Iran building a bomb for self-defence.
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