The Plight Of Kurds In Iran After Nuclear Talks Restarted

Before President Joe Biden came to power, he repeatedly announced his desire to rejoin the JCPOA if he was elected. Now his team is at the table with Iran for nuclear deal negotiations. But what would be the consequences of these talks for the Iranian people and human rights inside Iran? As we learned from the past, their plight not only will not get better, it will be worse.

Dr. Shamal Sofi Mirza, a Kurdish dissident in Ireland, noted how these negotiations will affect the Iranian people: “No one can negate the severe impact the Iranian nuclear ambition had on the Iranian people’s social, political and economic life since its inception decades ago. Indeed, this has had a double and drastic effect on the economically marginalized people, as the crippling burden of the nuclear program has been mainly on the shoulders of workers, teachers, civil servants, etc., while the government’s inner circles were getting more prosperous than ever before.”

He then added, ”Among the most exposed people who suffered more due to the program were the ethnic minorities in Iran, more specifically the Kurds who had already been sidelined economically, politically, and socially by the state and that with the advance of the Iranian nuclear program, their life got worse in many respects.” 

While the nuclear program had a devastating impact on the life of the Kurds, he explained: ”The nuclear deal known as the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” held in In July 2015 between Iran and the world-powers (5+1) did not provide respite from the suffering for the Kurds; instead, as the international pressure reduced on the Iranian regime, suppression, execution, and imprisonment against the Iranian Kurdish dissidents increased dramatically. The issue of human rights violations which had been already in place for decades, reached its highest peak during the time in question.”

Dr. Shamal believes that after JCPOA, the human rights abuses among minorities increased, especially among the Kurds: “Since Rouhani took power in 2013, and more precisely after the nuclear agreement, the number of Kurdish political activists executed have increased by 45% compared with the previous hardliner governments record of execution.  In 2014, only a year after Rouhani’s inauguration, 200 people were executed, from which 65% were Kurds, according to human rights activists. This number increased in the subsequent years as the United Nations’ top human rights official Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein called the hanging of up to 20 Kurds by Iran within a single week in 2016 a “grave injustice”.”

“During the same period, according to the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur about Human Rights in Iran, more than 700 political prisoners have been recorded in the Iranian prisons, with at least 966 executions in 2015, the year that the nuclear agreement has been signed,” he noted. “The number of people dragged into cross-border work (Kulbery) doubled, and more cross-border workers were killed than in the second term of the previous government. During Rouhani’s term, the Iranian government has attacked the Kurdish opposition groups based inside the Iraqi territory with high-range missiles and killed dozens.”

Dr. Shamal believes that by rejoining the JCPOA, the human rights condition inside Iran will get worse because the world powers are seeking an agreement without any care about human rights issues, stating “there is a clear relationship between the nuclear deal on one side and the increase in executions, human rights violations, and imprisonment of the Kurdish people on the other side”.