Iran's government has detained four Iranian-American dual nationals: Parnaz Azima, who works for Radio Farda, the Persian channel of Radio Free Europe; Haleh Esfandiari, an academic who was most notable for promoting a positive image of Iran; Kian Tajbakhsh, who is affiliated with George Soros' Open Society Institute; and Ali Shakeri, founder of the Center for Citizen Peace Building at the University of California, Irvine. Regardless of the details of their cases, these men and women are being held against their will on bogus charges.

There are many more unnamed individuals in similar conditions who don't make it to the headlines. But even when they do, like Mojtaba Saminejad, Arash Sigarchi and Sina Motallebi, there remain parasitic analysts and apologists of Iran's regime, who live by passing on as experts (on what?) in every online forum they can sell themselves off, that insist this is just a figment of our imagination. It is in fact perfect daylight, they proclaim, despite all the evidence of a pitch dark night. They are morally accountable for the lies they spread and for the harms they inflict. For lying in the same bed with the evils of our time. Because they do so knowingly.

Labels: human_rights, iran