Iranians in Tehran celebrate announcement of nuclear agreement in July.
When the Iran nuclear agreement was announced July 14, thousands of Iranians took to the streets in celebration. Since then, as backers and foes have lobbied members of the U.S. Congress to approve or reject the agreement, some Iranian dissidents have been speaking out in favor on social media. Some of these dissidents have served time in prison for opposing the regime that has run their country since the revolution of 1979.
Ishaan Tharoor at The Washington Post reports that two of the most outspoken activists, Mohammadreza Jalaeipour and Farrokh Negahdar, who posted videos of support on Facebook last week, have a lot of company for their campaign, which is operating under the online hashtag #SupportIranDeal:
They've been joined now by many other voices, some in exile and others even still in jail. The lengthy roster of testimonies includes Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, acclaimed filmmaker Jafar Panahi, women's rights activist Ghoncheh Ghavami, and Zia Nabavi, a student activist who is still serving a 10-year-sentence in an Iranian prison.
Jalaeipour, currently a PhD candidate in sociology at Oxford University, spent five months in solitary confinement in Tehran's infamous Evin prison for his involvement in the 2009 protests that followed the controversial reelection of former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. [...]
The extensive accumulation of testimonies serves somewhat as a riposte to a letter from a group of Iranian dissidents published in the Daily Beast earlier this month, which warned of the dangers of reaching compromise with the Islamic Republic and decried "Western apologists and appeasers of Iranian theocracy."
But a
poll conducted in June showed 57 percent of Iranians favored the framework for the agreement announced in April.
Among the testimonies favoring the agreement is that of Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, a lawyer, prominent human rights activist and founder of the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. You can see her video, below the fold, translated via subtitles.
Join us in urging senators and representatives to support the agreement and vote no on any resolution of disapproval.