Iran: history, politics, and contemporary issues

Iran

The current president of Iran, Mohammed Khatami, won the "deeply flawed elections" (Supporting Human Rights and Democracy: The U.S. Record 2003-2004, Iran) held in 2004. The Iranian government has continued to commit serious human rights violations, as well as numerous abuses, such as "summary executions, disappearances, extremist vigilantism, widespread use of torture," restrictions on workers rights and freedom of association, attacks on students, protesters and journalists (Ibid.) that culminated with the death of a Canadian citizen photographer who had been imprisoned in Iran. The government has made no real effort to stop discrimination and violence; on the contrary, it has continued to harass the "Baha'i community and other religious and ethnic minority groups, including Jews, Christians, and Sunni and Sufi Muslims" (Ibid.)

The main argument of President Bush upon his decision to invade Iraq was a two-fold theory based on the hypothesis that the war was needed in order to counter-attack the threat of Jihad terrorist acts to the U.S. And that the war would reduce the global number of terrorist acts and terrorists. Despite this motivation provided by the President for the invasion of Iraq, it is also true that no evidence of such a threat has been presented or made available to the general public. Other reasons for the war on Iraq were the weapons of mass destruction that Iraq allegedly possessed, complaints regarding violations of human rights, as well as Saddam Hussein's connection to the Al-Qaeda. Nevertheless, critics of the war have claimed that the oil supply of Iraq was the main reason behind the invasion that took place in 2003.