Government moving at ‘glacial speed’ to combat Iran, advocate says

The New Zealand Government has been too slow to take meaningful action against Iran for its human rights violations, an advocate says.

Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta announced new sanctions on Iranian officials for supplying drones to Russia and expanded travel bans on those behind the violent response to protests on Wednesday.

Protests erupted across the Islamic Republic in September following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was beaten by Guidance Patrol officers for violating Iran’s mandatory hijab law.

Iranian New Zealander Samira Taghavi is a lawyer and community organiser who is calling on the Government to impose stronger sanctions.

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“The Women, Life, Freedom movement has been alerting the government to the supply of Iranian-made drones to Russia for months now,” she said.

“Last year we noted that the Iranian regime was responsible for killing not just Iranian civilians but Ukrainian civilians – including Ukrainian children.”

Taghavi said the new sanctions are a step in the right direction but bolder, principled and more meaningful action is immediately required.

“The slowness of Mahuta’s response underscores that the Ardern and Hipkins governments have been complacently content to move with glacial speed in inventing the smallest possible steps against Iran,” she said, “rather than simply adopting the list of meaningful actions that Iranian New Zealanders have been pleading for now nearly half a year.”

Taghavi said the Government should expel the Iranian ambassador and add the Islamic Revolutionary Guard to its Terror Entities List.

“Our embassy in Turkey can instead adequately deal with our very small trading relationship with Iran,” she said.

“We demand that this government waste not even one more day, in taking this important step – inaction simply emboldens the regime to waste more lives.”

But Mahuta said the actions she has taken have been consistent with those of Aotearoa’s international partners.

“No country has expelled an Iranian ambassador in relation to human rights concerns around the death of Mahsa Amini and Iran’s responses to subsequent protests,” she said.

“The value of New Zealand’s presence on the ground in Iran was reinforced in 2021-2022 when hundreds of Afghan nationals were able to be evacuated to New Zealand via Iran in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.”

She said the Government was aware of calls for New Zealand to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist entity.

“Designation as a terrorist entity depends on meeting a tightly defined legislative test under the Terrorism Suppression Act (TSA),” she said.

“Indicative advice provided by officials last year was that available information on recent actions publicly attributable to the IRGC is unlikely to meet the statutory definition.”

Taghavi said the community hoped for a shift in approach by the Hipkins government regarding the breaches of human rights in Iran.

“The New Zealand Government talks of leading other nations by example,” she said.

“It is embarrassing that such moral imperative is totally forgotten when it comes to supporting the civilian population of Iran, who are daily being murdered, tortured and raped by the servants of the brutal Iranian dictatorship.”