Iran human rights record under increasing scrutiny after nuclear deal/Lee Smith: Zarif:Karine A Was an Israeli False Flag/Italian foreign minister invites Iran’s Rowhani to Rome

Iran human rights record under increasing scrutiny after nuclear deal
REUTERS/08/05/2015/GENEVA – The top UN human rights official called on Iran on Wednesday to release a spiritual figure sentenced to death at the weekend and end its longtime “problematic” use of executions. Iran’s human rights record is under increasing international scrutiny following a deal last month with world powers in which Tehran will see economically crippling sanctions against it lifted in exchange for curbing its disputed nuclear program. The Islamic Republic is reported to have executed more than 600 prisoners so far this year, while nuclear negotiations proceeded, after executing at least 753 people last year, a statement from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said. High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein said Iran had carried out many executions for drug offenses, some for crimes committed as minors, as well as cases with “broad, ill-defined charges.” Mohammad Ali Taheri, a writer and founder of the spiritual movement Erfan e-Halgheh (Inter-Universalism), was arrested in 2011 and given five years in prison on charges of insulting Islamic pieties. His wife was detained briefly last year after publication of his letter to a UN investigator about abuses in Iranian prisons and new charges were then laid against him. Taheri, held in Tehran’s Evin prison, was sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Court on Saturday on a charge of “fesad fel arz” (corruption on earth), Zeid said. “Taheri’s multiple convictions on a variety of vague charges, his alleged detention in solitary confinement and now his sentencing to death bring into stark focus serious issues with the administration of justice and the terribly worrying use of the death penalty in Iran,” Zeid said. “For an individual to be sentenced to death for peaceful exercise of freedom of expression, religion or belief is an absolute outrage — and a clear violation of international human rights law,” he said, calling on Iran to drop the charges and free Taheri forthwith. He also urged Iran to impose an immediate moratorium on all executions and to work with his office and other partners on alternative strategies to combat crime, noting that the “global trend is towards abolition.”
Under international law, including a key civil and political rights pact ratified by Iran, the death penalty may be applied only for “the most serious crimes,” generally interpreted to mean only crimes involving intentional murder, Zeid said.

Zarif: ‘Karine A Was an Israeli False Flag’
Lee Smith/The Weekly Standard Blog/Aug 4, 2015
According to Iranian-based media, Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif appeared on a panel today at Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations where he spoke about the nuclear agreement he negotiated with the P5+1 last month in Vienna. Zarif explained that the so-called snap-back sanctions mechanism was less effective than the Obama administration claims. “Our snap-back is easier than theirs,” is how one Iranian journalist tweeted Zarif’s talk, “because we can resume our work with nuts and bolts, but they should convince countries to resume sanctions.” Also, said Zarif, “doing business with foreigners is a guarantee to make them unable to use snap-back mechanism.”
Zarif says he’s confident that Iran won’t violate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but notes that “we should take care of plots like Karine A.” Here Zarif is referring to the 2002 incident when Israel stopped a ship, the Karine A, loaded with Iranian weapons destined for Yasser Arafat. Apparently, the man with whom John Kerry just negotiated a nuclear deal believes that the Karine A was a set-up to make the Iranians look bad. Israel did it. It gets Zarif so angry that he mentioned it at least twice. “I’ll never forget how the Israelis brought us to the Axis of Evil by Karine A false-flag scenario,” said Zarif. “Now they are working to derail the Iran deal.” Zarif is warning that maybe Israel will try to frame Iran again—maybe by building a secret nuclear facility under an Iranian mountain, or something equally devious. The point is that the Obama White House has tied American interests to a regime led by paranoid, anti-Semitic obscurantists. Of course Iran will never come clean about the possible military dimensions of the nuclear program. Zarif won’t even admit that Iran was responsible for the Karine A. The terrible shame is that America’s top diplomat is starting to sound like his counterpart from the Islamic Republic. Both see the handiwork of Israel everywhere they turn. Like Zarif, Kerry is preemptively blaming Israel should the JCPOA fail. If the deal doesn’t fly past Congress, as Kerry said last week, Israel will be to blame. By ignoring the vicious anti-Semitic rants of a criminal regime in order to make a worthless nuclear agreement with it, it was inevitable that the White House would come to sound more and more like its negotiating partner.

Italian foreign minister invites Iran’s Rowhani to Rome
Reuters/Wednesday, 5 August 2015/Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni has invited Iranian President Hassan Rowhani to visit Rome, Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported on Wednesday, a week after France invited him to visit Paris. Gentiloni conveyed the official invitation from Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi during a visit to Tehran, his first since Iran reached a nuclear deal with world powers last month that will see international sanctions lifted. A steady stream of European officials have visited Tehran since the deal, hoping to benefit from the opening of a major regional economy. Last week, France’s foreign minister, who had pursued a hard line during the nuclear talks, invited Rowhani to visit Paris in November.