WASHINGTON — A new executive order signed by President Barack Obama imposes sanctions on eight Iranian officials deemed responsible for serious human-rights abuses, including the killing, torture, beating and rape of Iranian citizens since the country’s disputed 2009 presidential election, administration officials said Wednesday.
Obama signed the order Tuesday, using a new legal tool that allows for individual sanctions on Iranian officials involved in human-rights abuses, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said. The Iran Sanctions Accountability and Divestment Act of 2010 “permits us to impose financial sanctions and deny U.S. visas to specific Iranian officials where there is credible evidence against them,” she told reporters.
The move marks the first time that the Obama administration has levied sanctions against Iran for human-rights abuses — in this case, offenses allegedly committed against dissidents following the disputed June 2009 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The government’s declaration of a landslide victory for Ahmadinejad, and the political opposition’s charges of massive vote fraud, led to massive street protests that were brutally crushed by security forces. Opposition activists said more than 70 people were killed, hundreds arrested and untold numbers beaten during the crackdown. They said detainees were also tortured and raped in prison. The Iranian government has denied engaging in human-rights abuses.
On the watch or under the command of the eight targeted officials, “Iranian citizens have been arbitrarily, beaten, tortured, raped, blackmailed and killed,” Clinton said during a news conference Wednesday. “Yet the Iranian government has ignored repeated calls from the international community to end these abuses, to hold to account those responsible, and respect the rights and fundamental freedoms of its citizens.”
Among the officials listed are the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the interior and intelligence ministers and top police and military commanders.
The move comes one week after Obama highlighted human rights as a matter of moral and pragmatic necessity for the United States in his annual speech before the U.N. General Assembly.
