What type of rights do the people of Iran have?

Question

We are private citizens who disagree with various things that our own government has done, but we ask, through our leaders, to settle the nuclear dispute directly with the civilians of Iran. Your government claims to protect the rights of Iranians, yet part of the population is deprived of the most fundamental of principles, the freedom of expression. The international community would like to know if the leadership's decisions coincide with the will of the majority of its people. Ordinary citizens are the ones being harmed by these sanctions. Here is a sample article illustrating how the nation of Iran treats some of its people : http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071008/ganji

Answer 1

Islamic Laws, like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Irak,  or United Arab Emirates

Answer 2

not of our business, Iran is a sovereign nation

Answer 3

The people of Iran elect their own government in principle so superficially it appears to be a democracy.  But there is a guardian council stacked with ultra conservative theologians (not neutral constitutional experts) who can randomly prevent candidates from running under ill-defined grounds of not meeting the ideals of the Islamic republic. This is not a fringe group, it routinely excludes the vast majority of reformists rendering the elections electorally almost meaningless in terms of representing the will of the people.  Once the candidates are preselected then the elections themselves are pretty fair.  And in either case once a government is elected the majority of its laws can be rejected without basis by the guardian council which itself is not elected. This renders a government pretty impotent. The last reformist president Mohammed Khatami discovered this fact to his great disadvantage and his governement was permanently crippled by interference from unelected establishment theologians.

And to address another posters comments, yes the Shah was thrown out in a revolution that was highly popular.  The flawed assumption is that this government fully represents that revolution.  The original instigators and drivers of the revolution were secular socialist groups like the Fedayeen. They were allied with the Islamists at the time. Once the revolution they along with other groups were exterminated by the Islamists who grabbed complete power through the influence of their dominating leader, Khomeini.

Till today a lot of opposition groups like the socialists, etc. are completely suppressed.  These are not pro-Shah groups by any means, they had a longer history of opposing the Shah than the islamists.

Apart from lack of representation, actual human rights are patchy.  Iranians are obviously considerably better off than North Koreans or even Yemenis.  But there is rather obviously a lack of freedom of expression and the revolutionary guard act as an unaccountable state within a state brutally suppressing student protests or any other opposition as they choose.  In fact, I think one could reasonably consider them to be completely unislamic in their actions, but that is hardly unusual since a lot of the islamic leaders themselves have been corrupted by power and are mostly just enriching themselves as the population gets impoverished.

Answer 4

Pretty sure the vast majority wanted the Shah out in '79 for being head of a US puppet govenment, his ousting seemed v. popular at the time and raised the main earner, oil, to sky high prices.  Iranians have the right in international law to petition and agitate for rights w/in the religious framework that exists but asking or expecting the West to overthrow these fanatics is rich now...

In short none, in the US they aren't worth the paper they are written on either if you are the victim of 'extrordinary rendition.'