In his landmark report last week, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran has once again urged for the creation of an “independent international investigative and accountability mechanism.” This is to lay the groundwork for the prosecution of regime officials involved in “atrocity crimes.” Javaid Rehman’s term will end this month, to be replaced by Mai Sato. The world should expect Sato to follow this example, but in the meantime, the international community should also take immediate steps to act upon her predecessor’s recommendations.
At a minimum, Western policymakers and human rights defenders should keep attention focused on Iran’s abysmal human rights record. This is doubly important in light of the recent election of Masoud Pezeshkian to replace Ebrahim Raisi as president of the theocracy.
Pezeshkian has been labeled a "reformist." This has ignited widespread speculation about potential policy shifts, including a possible reduction in the brutal crackdowns on dissent that have persisted since the nationwide uprisings of the past few years. However, seasoned experts on Iranian affairs swiftly dismiss such conjecture, underscoring that these crackdowns are intrinsic to the regime's very nature, driven by the unassailable authority of the supreme leader, whose dominion over all other institutions, including the presidency, remains absolute and unquestioned.
Pezeshkian has repeatedly affirmed his loyalty to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, a prerequisite for his approval as a candidate. Historically, loyalty to Khamenei has entailed active participation in a wide range of human rights abuses. This was clearly evidenced during Raisi’s tenure as president, when he oversaw a crackdown on the 2022 uprising which killed 750 protesters and landed 30,000 in jail, as well as an overall surge in the country’s already world-leading rate of executions.
But Raisi’s presidency was also representative of how prior unquestioned loyalty to the supreme leader is rewarded in the Iranian regime. As head of the judiciary in 2019, Raisi contributed to another crackdown in which a staggering 1,500 people were shot dead in a matter of days. That position had been given to him by Khamenei on the understanding that Raisi had demonstrated his commitment to political violence throughout his career, particularly when he served as one of four members of the Tehran “death commission” during the 1988 massacre of political prisoners.
That massacre was predictably a major point of focus for UN Rapporteur Rehman’s final report, and will surely continue to be investigated by Mai Sato. Rehman confirmed that the massacre’s main target was the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), which remains the country’s leading pro-democracy opposition. The MEK has lost nearly 30,000 of its members and supporters to mass executions just between July and September 1988. But beyond simply calling renewed attention to this clear crime against humanity, Rehman also used his final report to affirm that the massacre can credibly be described as a crime of genocide, because the underlying religious edict from former Supreme Leader Khomeini aimed not only to destroy a political opposition group but to “annihilate the enemies of Islam” en masse and in as short a time as possible.
Although MEK members are Muslim themselves, the Iranian regime considers them “hypocrites” and justifies summary execution on that basis. Rehman’s report quoted a prominent regime cleric as saying in 1980 that opposition activists are “apostates and worse than infidels” and thus “have no financial rights, nor the right to life.” Khomeini’s 1988 fatwa declared MEK members to be inherently guilty of “enmity against God,” a vaguely-defined capital offense that continues to be used in justifying politically-motivated executions, including several stemming directly from the 2022 uprising.
The Iranian regime’s framework for attacks on democratic opposition remained very much in place when Khamenei took over the supreme leadership after Khomeini’s death. It certainly remained as a guide for administration of the government by the “butcher of Tehran” Ebrahim Raisi, and it will remain throughout Pezeshkian’s “reformist” presidency as well.
In fact, the message that the international community should take from Rehman’s final report, and the message that his successor should try to convey as well, is that the spirit of the 1988 massacre will remain alive within the Iranian regime for as long as the regime retains its hold on power, and certainly for as long as the international community declines to confront it directly. But we can do just that, heeding Rehman’s call for an international investigation leading to the prosecution of those who were involved in the massacre and who remain not only free from justice, but still in positions of vast influence within Khamenei’s regime.