December 25 2020
In a dramatic shift, the European Parliament has condemned Iran’s human rights conduct and called on the EU to impose sanctions on Iran by an overwhelming 51-to-1 margin.
The vote was 614 members in favor and only 12 voting nay. In the past, the Islamic Republic could normally count on more than 12 members supporting it. Twelve is not even 2 percent of the membership of 705.
The resolution cited a string of instances of arrests in the past year and specifically called for the release of Nasrin Sotoudeh and Ahmad-Reza Jalali, a Swedish-Iranian dual national. It criticized the use of amputation and flogging and condemned discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities.
But it went beyond such condemnations to call for sanctions to be imposed against Iranian officials who have committed serious human rights violations. This comes amid talk of lifting US sanctions against Iran as part of return to the nuclear agreement. But human rights sanctions are exempt from lifting under that agreement.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh responded angrily, saying, “They [Europeans] call repression of protests, killing of Blacks, massacres of minorities and repression of migrants inside EU borders as law enforcement. But they label the fulfillment of judicial decisions under criminal law by a competent court in other countries to be a violation of human rights.”
The Majlis passed a resolution saying, “There is no doubt that Westerners, with their negative and dark backgrounds in support of terrorists, dictators, warmongers and assassins are never worthy of Iran’s embrace.” It called the EU resolution “ridiculous.”
The EU resolution was passed December 17. One day earlier, the UN General Assembly voted on its annual Iran resolution—introduced for the last two decades by Canada. The vote was 82-30-64. The largest vote for the resolution was 89 in 2011. Since then, there has never been fewer than 81 votes for the resolution. As for nay votes, this is the fourth year in a row that 30 countries have voted to side with Iran. The UN has 193 voting members.
The Islamic Republic replied, as it does every year, by dismissing the resolution as meaningless because it never gets a majority of the membership to vote for it. It also assailed Canada, as it does every year, for lacking authority to speak about human rights given that Canada has a “systematic policy of genocide of native Canadian people.”