Human Rights Watch Calls On Iran To Release Tri-National Hostage
British-American-Iranian wildlife conservationist Morad Tahbaz has ended his nine-day hunger strike he started after his abrupt return to prison despite pledges of furlough.
British-American-Iranian wildlife conservationist Morad Tahbaz has ended his nine-day hunger strike he started after his abrupt return to prison despite pledges of furlough.
Human Rights Watch said on Monday that Iranian authorities should immediately and unconditionally release him and other environmentalists wrongfully imprisoned with him.
The tri-national, in detention since January 2018, was left behind when two other British hostages -- Nazanon Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashuri -- were released by the Islamic Republic in exchange for a 400-million-pound UK debt to Iran.
The British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss claimed credit for negotiating a furlough for Tahbaz. Iranian authorities first released him on March 16 and allowed him to go to his family home in Tehran but detained him again two days later despite an apparent agreement between Iranian and British authorities to guarantee his leave, leading him to embark on a hunger strike.
Tara Sepehri Far, senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch, says, “It is abhorrent that Iranian officials continue to use dual and foreign nationals detained in Iran as bargaining chips. It is also particularly disappointing that British authorities did not do enough to ensure Iran would uphold the conditions they agreed to for Tahbaz’s furlough.”
In an interview published by BBC on Tuesday, Ashuri said, "Sometimes I think he should have been on the return plane instead of me. He is ill and needs medical attention”, adding that it's really painful that so many good people are left behind.
Calling the gathering "an evil meeting in the occupied territories," spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said the summit of foreign ministers of Israel, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco, also attended by the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, was a "betrayal of the cause of Palestine".
The participants in the summit met on Monday to display their unity against Iran. The Arab states also used the rare event to press Israel to return to the long-stalled peace talks with the Palestinians.
Tel Aviv says the event would be repeated and expanded. "This new architecture - the shared capabilities we are building - intimidates and deters our common enemies, first and foremost Iran and its proxies," Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said Monday alongside his US, Emirati, Bahraini, Moroccan, and Egyptian counterparts.
"As neighbors and, in the case of the United States, as friends, we will also work together to confront common security challenges and threats, including those from Iran and its proxies," Lapid, who initiated the summit said.
"Any move to normalize and establish relations with the terrorist Zionists and the occupiers of al-Quds (Jerusalem) is a stab in the back of the oppressed Palestinian nation and a gift to the child-killing Israeli regime to continue the killing of the [Palestinian] people and occupation of their land," Khatibzadeh said.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Blinken clarified behind closed doors that the US has not made a final decision regarding the removal of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) from its Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list, which all the five other countries strongly opposed.
History has proven that the "process of compromise and submission" has brought its advocates "nothing but defeat and humiliation," Khatibzadeh said while reiterating that Iran is prepared to cooperate with regional countries and expand its relations with them "to counteract the Zionist and American plots that aim to sow discord and spread instability in the West Asia region."
Tehran’s harsh words came as it has been negotiating for almost a year with Western powers to revie the 2015 nuclear agreement, JCPOA. The last main hurdle is Iran’s demand to remove the IRGC from the US terrorism list.
The UAE, Bahrain and Morocco normalized ties with Israel under a 2020 US initiative known as the Abraham Accords.
On Monday, in an unattributed commentary entitled "Some Truths About the Historical Meeting of Delusional [Leaders] At Negev Desert", Nour News website tried hard to downplay the importance of the meeting and claimed the summit only revealed that Israel is not able to create a coalition against Iran and the "resistance [front]".
The ‘resistance front’ is a term coined by Tehran to describe its allies and proxies throughout the region.
"Iran's recent attack on the Mossad base in Erbil and intensification of the missile and drone attacks of [the Houthis of] Yemen on strategic locations in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in recent days revealed that no plot can stop the resistance front in fulfilling security and stability in the region and counteracting the mercenaries of the West," Nour News which is affiliated to the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Ali Shamkhani, wrote.
"All this shows the fact that the Resistance [Front] led by the Islamic Iran is now the main player in the region," the commentary said.
