Iranians Protest Repression while Suffering under US Sanctions

Click here for the full episode, including the extended interview with Assal Rad on why Biden won’t reenter the Iran nuclear deal, the historic suppression of the Iranian left stemming from the Cold War, and how sanctions are crushing Iranian workers.

“The state is responsible. Period. There’s just no question.”

Author and historian Assal Rad joins Useful Idiots to discuss the Iranian protests over the case of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who died after being detained by Iran’s “Morality Police” for not adequately covering her hair.

“She shouldn’t have been detained in the first place,” Rad says. “The fact that there is this law, this dress code, that doesn’t allow women a basic form of free expression is the problem.”

Amini’s death has sparked protests across Iran and the west, with politicians and celebrities weighing in from around the world.

“This is a human rights issue,” Rad says. “But so were the sanctions on Iran during the pandemic. It’s problematic when you only cite human rights organizations and international law and the UN when it serves your purpose.”

Today, crippling sanctions on Iran are starving its people, and women are affected the most. But Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber aren’t posting on Instagram about it. The West chooses when to call out human rights abuses against women and when to ignore them.

“And that’s why outside powers having any kind of intervention is so problematic. They’re not doing it in the interest of those civilians, they’re doing it in their own national interest,” Rad says. “This is why listening to and supporting voices in Iran is so important.”

Assad Rad’s new book is “The State of Resistance Politics, Culture, and Identity in Modern Iran.”

Plus, subscribe to hear the full interview on why Biden won’t reenter the Iran nuclear deal, the historic suppression of the Iranian left stemming from the Cold War, and how sanctions are crushing Iranian workers.

It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out.

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