The U.S. Formula

"...An agreement without a strong human rights component sends a very clear message to the Iranian government, and the message is: so long as you don't develop a nuclear weapon you're free to kill and imprison your citizens without any repercussions.
"From a moral perspective, it makes no sense, and I'm worried that the same message is being delivered to the Iranian government; as long as you don't threaten your neighbours and are not externally aggressive, you can be as aggressive as you want, internally, domestically, to your own population."
Kaveh Shahrooz, Iranian-Canadian Toronto lawyer

Well, that's a perspective from an expatriate Iranian. The Iranian community within Canada has its internal concerns for the well-being of extended family members within the country of their birth. They left Iran looking for a future elsewhere because they objected to the government that had taken power in Iran, to its agenda, its ideology, its use of religious fanaticism to deceive, demoralize and destroy the human rights of their citizens.

The oppressive regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran which victimizes any of its citizens who fail to heed the orders of the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to be appropriately pious in attitude and attire, and to worship only the Shia version of Islam approved by the ruling ayatollahs has created a society of fearful, secretive opposition. The Islamic Revolution that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini brought to Iran slaughtered a hundred thousand recalcitrant Iranians as it settled into power.

The murder of political prisoners, the imprisonment, torture and killing of political opponents, of homosexuals, of those practising an unapproved religion like the Baha'i, the number of state executions, all mark Iran as an oppressive, criminal regime. Its extraterritorial ambitions have been expressed in many ways, not least in their creation of the martyrdom-cult terror group Hezbollah whom they dispatch when they wish to embark on international atrocities.

Their support of a regime in Syria that has been patterned on their own style of brutal tyranny, is an expression of their irredentist values. Irrespective of these observable and proven facts the international community led by the United States has focused on one element among many: President Bashar al Assad of Syria is given a free pass to continue the conflict against his own people as long as he surrends his chemical weapons store, after using them quite successfully.

And Tehran's ayatollahs and the Republican Guard which keeps them in power to preserve their own power status and collection of illicit gains through what should be and once were state-owned enterprises, which they took personal possession of to enrich themselves, are not held to account for their deadly persecution of their own people, let alone their financial support of terror groups, using them for their own nefarious purposes, so long as they promise to temporarily suspend nuclear advances.
DIPLOMACY WORKS. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaking during a press conference on November 24, 2013 in Tehran. AFP PHOTO / HO / IRANIAN PRESIDENCY
With the arranged and approved election of Hassan Rouhani, the Republic continues as it always has, under the guise of changing its course to reflect a more sensitive state, while it has executed more Iranians than ever before in a shorter time frame. And President Rouhani has seen fit to appoint a key figure involved in the massacres of thousands of Iranian dissenters -- the murders of political prisoners in the late 1980s, which represents a crime against humanity -- Moustafa Pour-Mohammadi to the ministry of justice in Iran.

This is the new American formula for dealing diplomatically with nuisance regimes that threaten to upset the international applecart of civil relations. Tehran's surface cooperation on the nuclear file is the focus of Washington's solution to what has been an impending disaster of a nuclear-armed Republic of Iran, a reality that has set its neighbours on the edge of existential concern, borne out by the threats that emanate from the regime.

And the those who feel they have more than adequate reason to distrust the sincerity of the Iranian regime are subjected to criticism, that they are more interested in war than peace, achieved by diplomatic means. As though Iran is not skilled in the use of diplomacy to achieve its warring ambitions. They are the nay-sayers, the champions of conflict, while the secretive overtures to appeal to Tehran to ramp down its immediate ambitions are the champions of peace.

This is, after all, a country that achieved its current nuclear installations by stealth and secrecy, by the illegal enrichment of uranium, which the new agreement has handily given a stamp of legality to, in the greater interests of reaching an amicable accord with an unamiable, taciturn, would-be world power that instructs its followers to chant "Death to America!" at every opportunity to ensure that the message remain alive and well. A message that America is blissfully oblivious to.

"We are not seeking regime change and we respect the right of the Iranian people to access peaceful nuclear technology", assured President Barack Obama, that his administration was set on restoring the regime to its "rightful place in the community of nations", during several speeches to the United Nations general assembly. The trouble, of course, is that Iran is not quite so interested in assuming what Mr. Obama assumes to be its 'rightful place in the community of nations', it is consumed with its entitlement to lead the community of nations.

So, move right on over, Mr. Obama, make place for Iran, where Washington can continue to sit at its feet, to fulfill the aspirations of Tehran. It's the trajectory the Obama administration appears to have set in its seemingly deliberate disregard of stark realities.