Iranian Dissidents Explain Why They Support the Nuclear Deal

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/07/24/iranian-dissidents-explain-why-they-support-nuclear-deal

The report, High Hopes, Tempered Expectations: Views from Iran on the Nuclear Negotiations, features interviews with an array of Iranians—former political prisoners, filmmakers, political scientists, civil rights lawyers, playwrights, journalists, actors, economists, novelists, publishers, theater directors (some of them belonging to two or more of these categories, former political prisoner being the most common). In other words, these are not big fans of the Iranian government. Indeed, for personal security reasons some agreed to participate in the report only on condition of anonymity.

And the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran itself is anything but enthusiastic about the Islamic Republic: the vast majority of its reports, videos and activity document the regime’s brutal repression and condemn its systematic rights violations in unflinching terms.

This report thus provides a vital perspective, one that’s been largely absent in the global debate about the nuclear deal—and in some cases misrepresented (for example, by neoconservative pundits who claim the deal is a gift to the regime and sells the Iranian opposition short). This report reveals what the regime’s critics, opponents, and victims, inside the country, actually think about this critical issue.

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“Social hopelessness would increase drastically [if the agreement fell through]. People would once again lose their motivation for reforms. … The failure of the negotiations would equal the failure of moderates and the strengthening of the radical camp. … The atmosphere for cultural activities and journalism would become tremendously more difficult. … [A] continuation of sanctions would place the country in a defensive mode … [and] the domestic security organs would increasingly pressure the media and journalists in order to silence any voices of dissent.”

—a journalist in Tehran and former political prisoner (anonymous)

This last comment echoes the sentiments of Akbar Ganji, one of Iran’s leading democratic dissidents who almost died on a hunger strike behind bars. “As a former Iranian political prisoner who spent six years in the Islamic Republic’s jails and whose writings have been banned in Iran, I support the [nuclear] agreement,” he has written. Reaching a nuclear deal, he argued, would “gradually remove the warlike and securitized environment from Iran.” The Iranian political scientist Sadegh Zibakalam