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Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203863204574346741590956518.html
Engaging Iran on Human Rights
[Wall Street Journal] Alexander Benard - * The United States should propose a conversation with Iran about human rights. Since the rigged presidential election, Tehran has continued its ruthless crackdown on political dissent. The regime initiated mass trials against more than 100 people associated with the post-election protests. Other members of the opposition have already been imprisoned, tortured and forced to provide false confessions that they were acting as foreign spies. * In this context, negotiations about Iran's nuclear program would not only be inappropriate, they would also be counterproductive. Nuclear talks would allow Ahmadinejad to divert attention away from the serious fault lines in Iran that events have revealed in the last few months - both within the regime, as well as between the regime and the opposition. * While a conversation about Iran's right to nuclear power would in large part rally Iranians behind Ahmadinejad, a conversation on human rights would do just the opposite. The idea is similar in principle to Sen. Henry ("Scoop") Jackson's push for introducing human rights as a component of our negotiations with the Soviet Union in the 1970s. * Ahmadinejad would face a clear choice: Accept the framework and risk providing Iranians with the very freedoms that could undermine his totalitarian regime; or, more likely, reject the framework and incur the wrath of Iran's democrats. A majority of the Iranian people want greater protection for human rights and better relations with the West. Here would be an opportunity for them to have both. * Ironically, by declining to talk about nuclear weapons, the U.S. actually stands a better chance of resolving that very issue. The regime will never voluntarily give up its nuclear program, no matter how many carrots Mr. Obama offers. * The nuclear issue will go away only when this regime does. Shifting the focus to human rights is helpful in that respect, since it weakens the mullahs and accelerates real democratic change. The writer has worked at the Department of Defense and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.