Iranians have frequently fought—though not often successfully—to break the yoke of tyrants. But upon examination of the policies and practices of four subsequent administrations in post-Khomeini Iran, it remains unclear whether these changes have positively or adversely affected the country’s human rights situation. The possibility of a top-down change or negotiating with those who violate human rights in Iran remains remote and, at best, impractical. Human rights activists and advocates would have more success by concentrating on a different strategy—that is, the need to strengthen the struggle for human rights in Iran by underscoring the importance of education, international organizations such as the United Nations, and local and regional non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in fostering the interaction between internal and external political dynamics.
Throughout Iran’s history, the struggle for reform and human rights has included all social strata and classes, while signaling national aspirations of the vast majority of Iranians for democratic reform.
Throughout Iran’s history, the struggle for reform and human rights has included all social strata and classes, while signaling national aspirations of the vast majority of Iranians for democratic reform. This hope has been repeatedly dashed by outsiders (an American-British engineered coup in 1953 that removed Iran’s popularly elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq) as well as internal leadership (the Pahlavi dynasty and the Islamic Republic after the 1979 Iranian Revolution). The post-revolutionary changes and transformation have since spurred a rigorous debate among the region’s scholars over what interpretation of democratic reform and cultural politics should shape Iran’s human rights condition in the future. In recent years, the country’s moral and political divide has further deepened, with the ruling elite facing both normative and institutional challenges. The revolutionary fervor, however, encountered wide-ranging challenges, as new social, economic, and political problems compounded the Islamic Republic’s attempt to advance its ideological goals. The population explosion, the Iran-Iraq War, and the emigration of some three million Iranians created a whole host of problems that undermined the ruling elites’ revolutionary approach.
