Iran Urges Biden to Mind Own Human Rights Record, Sanctions Regime

By Staff, Agencies

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman has slammed the United States’ “hypocrisy” on human rights, urging US President Joe Biden to mind his own country’s human rights record and lift inhumane anti-Iran sanctions if he is truly concerned about human rights.

“It would have been better if Mr. Joe Biden, before taking up humanitarian postures, had thought about the human rights record of his own country, though hypocrisy needs no thinking,” Nasser Kanaani said in a Tuesday Instagram post.

Kanaani further said the US president should instead be concerned about the numerous sanctions Washington has imposed against the Iranian nation, “as their implementation against any nation is a clear example of crimes against humanity.”

People across the world “have been and are witnessing the true and unmasked face of American human rights” in many countries, including Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Syria and even on US soil, he added.

Kanaani was reacting to a statement released by the White House late on Monday in which Biden accused Iran of a violent crackdown against nationwide protests following the death of a young Iranian woman in a hospital days after collapsing at a police station in the capital Tehran.

Biden had pledged to place “further costs” on Iran, while at the same time claiming that Washington would continue to support the rights of Iranians to “protest freely.”

Protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman who fainted at a police station on September 16 and was later pronounced dead at a hospital, erupted first in her native province of Kurdistan and later spread to other parts of the country, including Tehran.

The protests soon turned violent, with foreign-backed rioters going on the rampage in several cities, attacking security officers, resorting to vandalism against public property, and desecrating religious sanctities.