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The protests in Tehran and the silence of the German chancellor

You could call it a turning point.

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The protests in Tehran and the silence of the German chancellor

You could call it a turning point. Changing times, especially foreign policy, are actually a specialty of Olaf Scholz. Another specialty of the Chancellor is to disappear when the situation is really urgent. What has been happening in Iran for a good month is urgent.

Olaf Scholz, meanwhile, is silent. He was also silent on the situation in the country when he addressed the UN General Assembly in mid-September, where Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi was also addressing. Scholz didn't say a word about the protests. They were already in full swing.

The trigger was the death of 22-year-old Kurd Mahsa Jina Amini. She was arrested by the so-called moral police on September 13 because she had not worn her headscarf in accordance with "morals". She was dead three days later. Leaked CT scans from the hospital where Jina Amini was taken show broken bones and bleeding in the brain. The violence must have been massive.

Since then, people in Iran have been protesting for women's rights, for human rights, for freedom. They are imprisoned, tortured and killed. Unlike previous waves of protest, the people are not concerned with political reforms or the poor economic situation. The demonstrators on the street, but also those who show solidarity and do not actively protest, have had enough.

Irreversible enough. They know that there can be no reforms with this regime and turn against the power apparatus as such. People of all classes, all ethnic groups and all genders are on the streets. They shout slogans like "Woman, Life, Freedom" and "Don't be afraid, we are all together".

Something important has happened this week: the oil workers have joined the protests. In the 1979 revolution, the protest of oil workers was a key factor in the success of the coup. Today's protest movement is new, unique, and therefore a real threat to the regime.

While the so-called Middle East region is experiencing a political turning point, both the Chancellor and his party are surprisingly quiet. In his only public statement, a tweet, a week after Jina Amini's death, Olaf Scholz wrote that it was "terrible" that she died "in police custody" - as if her death was just another instance of police violence, not the act a state machine of oppression that systematically abuses women. Scholz did not condemn the regime, and his tweet did not even contain any criticism.

The Chancellor's reaction is in line with the policy that the SPD has long pursued towards the Iranian regime: forbearance and rapprochement. In 2016, shortly after the conclusion of the nuclear agreement, the then SPD Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel was one of the first Western politicians to travel to Iran with a business delegation. He explained that the German economy was "very interested" in business relations, and "the Iranians too".

With "the Iranians" he could hardly have meant the people in the country, and certainly not the women, who even then lived with daily repression. Torture, arrests, executions – none of which are new developments. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, also SPD, even sent an official letter of congratulations to the regime in 2019 on the 40th anniversary of the revolution.

He conveyed "congratulations" on the anniversary, "also on behalf of my compatriots". Human rights were not an issue in his writing. He at least asked the fundamentalist rulers "to also listen to the critical voices in your country". This wish of the Federal President has remained unfulfilled.

In 2015, the SPD-affiliated Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) concluded a cooperation agreement with the Iranian Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS), a think tank attached to the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The then FES chairman Kurt Beck traveled to Tehran in 2015 to hold talks with "high-ranking representatives from politics and society".

Nothing is known of meetings with human rights activists or members of the opposition. Upon request, the FES confirmed that this cooperation agreement, originally concluded for two years, was last extended for a further four years in 2020.

Just a few months earlier, at the end of 2019, the largest protests to date had taken place in Iran; Human rights organizations estimate that within a few days the regime killed hundreds of people, including many young people. Nevertheless, the foundation extended the agreement with the regime.

The FES explained that the cooperation agreement served to lead "dialogue formats" in Tehran and Berlin. The foundation is concerned with "being able to better penetrate the Iranian perspective". The fact that the FES considers the regime's domestic and foreign policies "highly problematic" did not prevent them from exchanging views with the Iranian dictatorship.

Although the regime's violent modus operandi became particularly clear to the world public during these protests, political institutions in Germany have long known that the behavior in violation of human rights by those in power has remained the same since 1979.

According to the FES, the foundation plans “no further activities” with the IPIS against the background of the current developments. The possibility of future planning with IPIS was "unmistakably" terminated at the end of September.

Olaf Scholz has not commented on the events in Iran since his tweet about three weeks ago. Instead, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has been criticized because she initially acted with restraint - even though one of her trademarks is feminist foreign policy.

Focusing on Baerbock can only be good for Olaf Scholz. He takes no substantive or political stance on human rights violations, although he tirelessly emphasizes the importance of human rights in foreign policy.

Now would be the time to critically evaluate the relationship between the ruling SPD party and the Iranian regime. One does not know where Olaf Scholz stands in the whole thing, even after a month of protests. The turning point, it takes place without the German Chancellor.

Gilda Sahebi is a journalist, doctor and political scientist.

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