A young woman – 26-year-old Reyhaneh Jabbari – was hanged last Saturday from the gallows in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. Her crime was self-defense. She struck down an attacker as he attempted to rape her when she was still a teenager in 2007.
President Hassan Rouhani, who won election last year on a purportedly liberal reformist platform, failed to intervene and commute the death sentence imposed back in 2009.
If anything, this tragedy underscores the gaping chasm between the regime’s “make-nice” affectations toward the international community and the unchanging face of the harsh ayatollah rule at home.
Jabbari’s sad story exposes Iranian hypocrisy and double-dealing vis-à-vis the West, which could barely contain its alacrity to ease sanctions on Tehran as soon as Rouhani was sworn in.
Presumably, according to American and EU pronouncements, supposedly less hard-line Rouhani (despite the ayatollahs’ suspicion-arousing backing) is a harbinger of change both as far as the repressive domestic theocracy is concerned as well as his country’s nuclear ambitions.
Israel’s warnings that the West willy-nilly allows Iran to develop nuclear weapons are scornfully ignored abroad. The hanging of a young rape victim for the crime of fighting off a sexual predator further gives the lie to claims of Iranian liberalization. Nevertheless, there’s no meaningful outrage in the international community, save for scarcely audible official lip-service and obligatory denunciation from Amnesty International.
But Iranian duplicity can no longer be swept under the rug of expediency and realpolitik in the West.
Had Rouhani’s election truly heralded an overhaul of Iranian tyranny, a way could have been found to save the unfortunate young woman’s life. The handy excuse that was proffered for her heartless execution was that the relatives of the dead man had to agree to a reprieve but they refused to do so.
The Rouhani regime cited Koranic law as leaving it no other “legal recourse” but to put Jabbari to death.
However, reliance on precisely this sort of uncompromising religious despotism is what makes the current powers-that-be in Tehran untrustworthy in regard to their nuclear project, terror sponsoring as well as cruel authoritarianism domestically.
There will always be a Koranic pretext for why Iran cannot behave as it appears to have solemnly promised in order to avoid punitive measures.
How can the Ayatollahs be expected to show moderation toward “Little Satan” Israel when they are so brutal regarding their own population? What moderation is shown Iranian women?
Their lives are over in case of any sexual abuse. If they defend themselves, they are condemned to death. Iran, it ought to be noted, has the world’s second-highest rate of capital punishment, after China. By September 30, there were 531 executions this year in Iran.
If the assailed Iranian women don’t resist, they are branded as “tainted” and ostracized in the best case scenario. But they can expect far worse than lifelong shame and shunning.
Sweeping Iran these days is an unprecedented spate of terrifying acid attacks on young women whose only crime appears to be the fact that someone in their proximity had determined that they aren’t properly covering their hair as mandated by strict Shiite dogma. For that they are disfigured and in some cases even blinded.
Little official action is taken to counter this terror in the streets. The regime’s energies are almost exclusively focused on scamming Washington and Europe and achieving a dream deal that would effectively lift away all trade and financial restrictions but leave Iran on the nuclear threshold with the ability to produce atomic bombs.
Grudgingly we must admit that Tehran had essentially managed to hoodwink the US, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia. In fact, more than Iran has managed to pull the wool over the eyes of the international coterie, the nations of the world desperately wish to be fooled.
They prefer to believe (or pretend to believe) that by some miraculous happenstance Iran has transformed itself overnight from a ruthless theocracy – whose agenda inter alia includes the subjugation of women and wiping Israel off the map – to an agreeable member of the international community.
Bucking the Trend ... 
The nations of the world do not attach as much importance to the absence of human rights in Iran or Iran’s nuclear / genocidal ambitions as they do to fat profits.
Shortsighted.
If Iran were threatening UK or Germany the Nuclear talks would take a very different form. But as it is ‘only Israel’ they are probably quite pleased! When the UN voted for Israel in 1947, many leaders hoped and expected the surrounding Arab nations would destroy the newly reformed state. They have been disappointed for decades now. Zechariah 12 and 14 reveals that Almighty God will save his chosen Israel. Such is the faithful God of Jacob.
Dick Worth
This was a Judicial murder, nothing less. Sharia, Shiite or Sunni, is a totally misogynistic system that allows it’s male follower’s to feel like “real” men by subjugating it’s women!
Actually, Iran has hoodwinked nobody. Sarah softens that by saying the nations of the world desperately wish to be fooled and prefer to believe Iran, but then seizes the plain truth in the vise grip of parentheses: (or pretend to believe). But, they aren’t fooling themselves. No, they’re playing dumb out of deceit, and with malice aforethought toward Israel.
In a world filled with daily atrocities perpetrated against the weak and defenseless, few people seem to have the courage and simple human decency to speak out against these barbaric, outrageous acts. The state sanctioned murder of a defenseless young woman in Iran is a case in point.
Did President Obama or the Pope or any person who might have made a serious difference in saving this young woman’s life, step up to the plate.
Despite all the horror stories we read about every day this story has somehow affected me more deeply than most. I shudder to imagine what were the last thoughts of the young woman as the noose was placed around her young neck.
It is just further proof that no one wants, no one dares, to comment on the barbaric nature of the teachings contained in the “Holy Koran”.
“There will always be a Koranic pretext for why Iran cannot behave as it appears to have solemnly promised”.
Indeed, the above quote from the story speaks volumes.
How similar is the situation to the children’s fable about “The King’s New Clothes” which were invisible to the human eye because they in fact did not exist.
But no one, world “leaders” in particular, wants to disturb the “infinite sensibilities” of hundreds of millions of people by pointing out that what they believe are teachings of the highest morals and infinite rectitude are in actuality the marching orders that will justify unlimited evil and mass genocide down the road. We have already witnessed such behavior in the Middle East. It only becomes worse and worse by the week.
And one’s brain must reel in consternation at how the Obama Administration as well as others have now decided to support those warring groups based on which seem the least capable of atrocities.
One might draw the comparison to the rise of Hitler in the 1920’s.
No one or almost no one could see or dared to see where his insane rants before adoring and cheering, enraptured crowds was leading the world until it was too late.
When one single country can execute a young woman with impunity for the alleged “crime” of defending herself from the attack of a rapist, no woman is safe anywhere in the world from autocratic regimes whose guide book is the “Holy Koran”.
When people are killed today, in the name of religion we are looking at a future Holocaust on the way to happening. When people murder in the name of Islam and claim that they have no choice because it is required of them by the “Holy Koran”, it is the same thinking that allowed millions of people to exterminate the Jews claiming it was required of them.
“But we were just following orders”. Yes- we have heard it all before!
Iran has a ready answer for why 26-year-old Reyhaneh Jabbari had to die.
It was required by the “Holy Koran”, the same Koran that also requires death to all Jews.
Israel must be prepared and more than prepared to protect its existence.
The lessons of 1967 should never be forgotten. When there exist clear and present existential dangers on the horizon one must act quickly and decisively and not await “world opinion”.
It was after all “world opinion” during the Holocaust that tended to believe that Six Million Jews less in the world was not a matter of much importance.
Exactly!!!!!!!!!!
Hear, hear.
Correct. It’s not about “Iran” but rather about Islam itself. Starting with David’s statement “One might draw the comparison to the rise of Hitler in the 1920’s.”, the issue is clearly explained. The problem is Islam. And Islam and its followers must be eradicated, same as Nazism.
The hanging of that innocent woman again was proof, that Iran is ruled by RABID mullahs !
Iran is one big terror entity, hell bent on the developement of nuclear weapons.
Iran is the biggest threat to the whole of the planet since the Third Reich…it MUST be stopped by military force.
Khamenei is the worlds most dangerous terrorist, I HOPE that he will be hanged by his own people !
Do we really believe Iran has “hoodwinked” the US and European powers? They have willfully deluded themselves.