BRUSSELS —“I think the EU prefers to sign business deals with Iran,” said Saeed Ghasseminejad, an Iran research fellow at the Washington, DC-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) as he reacted to the European Union’s rather cautious stance towards protests against the regime in Iran.
“The EU has shown that its main concern is to keep its welfare state alive through lucrative business deals with dictators around the world,” he said.
“Without pressure from the US, the EU will continue supporting the Islamist regime of Tehran,” he said.
At least 21 people have been killed in the latest wave of protestes in the country that last week in the eastern city of Mashhad, before quickly spreading to other cities.
Hundreds of beatings by authorities and arrests have been reported since Sunday.
The protests have challenged the very legitimacy of the Islamic Republic, with demonstrators calling for an end to clerical rule and the regime’s imperial designs on neighboring states.
In its latest reaction ‘’on behalf of the EU’’, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini called an all parties concerned ‘’to refrain from violence.’’
‘’The European Union is closely following the ongoing demonstrations in Iran, the increase of violence and the unacceptable loss of human lives,’’ she said.
‘’For the EU, human rights have always been a core issue in our relationship with Iran. Peaceful demonstration and freedom of expression are fundamental rights that apply to every country, and Iran is no exception,’’ she added.
‘’In the last days, we have been in touch with the Iranian authorities. In the spirit of frankness and respect that is at the basis of our relationship, we expect all concerned to refrain from violence and the right of expression to be guaranteed, also in light of the statements made by the Iranian Government,’’ she said.
Mogherini concluded by saying that the EU ‘’will continue to monitor the situation.’’
The EU is part of the nuclear deal with Iran.
For Saba Farzan, Executive Director of the Foreign Policy Circlen, a Berlin-based think tank, ‘’the European Union as the largest alliance of democracies around the globe has reached another low point in its silence toward the Iranian people’s quest for their inalienable human rights.’’
“This is Europe’s backyard we’re talking about, and yet the EU acts as if peaceful demonstrations met with violence are happening on a different planet.”
“Some figures keep silent and some figures openly apologize for the Islamist regime both are truly disgraceful,” she said.
The European respone contrasted most dramatically with the expressions of support for the protesters from American politicians led by President Donald Trump — who said that the people of Iran ‘’are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime.’’
‘’All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their ‘pockets.’ The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching!”, he added in a tweet.
In contrast, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel were cautious in their statements, only stressing the rights of the protesters to assemble peacefully.
Johnson spoke of the right to “demonstrate peacefully within the law,” while Gabriel appealed to “the Iranian government to respect the rights of the demonstrators to assemble and to peacefully raise their voices.”
French President Emmanuel Macron has expressed his concern over unrest in Iran during a telephone conversation with counterpart Hassan Rouhani and called for “restraint and appeasement,” his office said.
Macron brought up “the number of victims from the demonstrations”, and the two leaders also decided to postpone French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian’s visit to Tehran this week to a later date, the Elysee said.