Rouhani Is No “Moderate” on Human Rights – Irwin Cotler
(dailyalert.org, May 19, 2014)

The systematic and widespread violations of human rights in Iran are being overshadowed – if not sanitized – by the preemptive international focus on the nuclear issue. Yet these serious human rights abuses in Iran continue unabated – or have even intensified – under Rouhani’s “moderate” presidency.

When the U.S. negotiated an arms control agreement with the Soviet Union in 1975, it did not turn a blind eye to the USSR’s human rights abuses. Instead, the Helsinki Final Act linked the security, economic, and human rights “baskets,” with human rights emerging as the most transformative of the three. Negotiations with Iran should replicate this approach. The writer is former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. (Algemeiner)