UN Rights Report Part of West's Pressure Campaign

A lawmaker denounced the recent UN human rights report on the Islamic Republic as "politically-motivated", saying such reports are part of the plans pursued by the West to pressure Iran to change its tack and make concessions.

Hassan Norouzi also told ICANA, "This report is totally unfounded and in line with the hostile [western] policies against Iran. Those behind such reports are seeking to gain concessions from Iran, but they should know that they would get nowhere."

On 24 March 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution reestablishing the mandate of a special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran.

On 30 September 2016, the president of the rights council appointed Asma Jahangir from Pakistan as the new special rapporteur on Iran. Jahangir officially assumed responsibility for undertaking the mandate in November 2016.

The Pakistani lawyer is set to present her second report on the Islamic Republic to the third committee of the UN General Assembly. In her report, she criticizes Iran, among other issues, for its pace of executions, mainly involving convicted drug traffickers.

  War on Drugs

Iran has strict laws regarding those who smuggle illicit drugs.

Under current laws, trafficking or trading of over 5 kg of opium or 30 grams of heroin carries the death penalty.

Last month, the parliament passed a long-debated amendment that would raise the threshold for imposing the death penalty in drug trafficking cases to 50 kg of opium, or 2 kg of heroin, morphine, cocaine or their chemical derivatives.

Iran, which shares a 900-kilometer border with the biggest narcotic producer, namely Afghanistan, has always maintained that had it not been for its war on drugs, the Europeans, who often criticize Iran for its harsh line in this regard, would have witnessed "a tsunami of drugs" in their countries.

Despite high economic and human costs, the Islamic Republic has been actively fighting drug trafficking for the past three decades. The war on drug trade originating from Afghanistan has claimed the lives of nearly 4,000 Iranian police officers over the past 34 years.

Norouzi pointed to the killing of thousands of people in countries like Yemen, Syria and Iraq, saying that such atrocities would not have happened if the terrorists had not received financial and moral support from countries that are the self-proclaimed advocates of democracy and human rights.

Iran was instrumental in holding in check the massacres and killings committed in Syria and Iraq when it sent its military advisors there, again at high economic and human costs, to help the governments there establish the rule of law and stop millions of people from taking refuge in other countries, particularly the West.

The refugee crisis triggered by the wars in Iraq and Syria is said to be the biggest humanitarian crisis after the Second World War. Separately, Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasemi dismissed the claims last week, saying both the report and the official's mission were based on "a resolution relying on purely political and selective goals and malice of certain countries with a special agenda."

"The Islamic Republic, hence, completely rejects the report and considers it unacceptable," he said.

"Unfortunately, despite the frequent, detailed and logical responses of the Islamic Republic of Iran to unfounded allegations, the content of the report continues to be based on a series of inaccurate information and inappropriate prejudices about the human rights situation in Iran, using unreliable sources, which seriously compromise the credibility of the report."