Statement by 317 Political Activists: The 30-Person Letter to Trump is 'Anti-National'

More than three hundred political and civil activists reacted to a letter from 30 Iranian political activists to Donald Trump, the elected President of the United States, by issuing a statement calling this action 'definitely an anti-national and shameful act.' According to the website Kalemeh, these 317 individuals described the correspondence of political activists with the elected President of the United States as 'an ill-considered and trivial action' and wrote: 'It is appropriate for political activists to clearly define their boundaries with anti-national currents and foreign puppets and to firmly condemn such trivial actions.' A group of Iranian political and civil activists abroad on Sunday, December 25, sent a letter to Donald Trump, the elected President of the United States, requesting that the new U.S. government 'expand the existing sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the financial empire of Ayatollah Khamenei.' This letter received widespread reactions on social media and in media outlets inside and outside Iran, with several political and civil activists expressing their agreement and disagreement with it. Some social media users interpreted this action as a means of 'encouraging war' against Iran, while some of the letter's authors stated that it was written to prevent war. Amir Hossein Etemadi, one of the signatories of the 30-person letter, previously told Radio Farda that the sanctions proposed in this letter are 'very targeted and can help revive the private sector in Iran.' Etemadi stated that the authors of this letter 'do not want to sever Iran's ties with the world but seek to cut the hands of the IRGC and the empire of Ayatollah Khamenei from Iran's economy.' Ahmad Batebi, another author of the 30-person letter to Trump, responded to the statement of these 317 individuals on Thursday, January 9, emphasizing that the letter to Trump is not a letter to one person but to the U.S. presidency, describing 'inviting foreigners to intervene in Iran's affairs' as a concept of 'value' that he believes is considered 'a slogan, idealistic, and populist in the realm of politics.' In part of his response published on his personal website, Batebi wrote that during the 'Green Movement and the peaceful civil protests of the people in the years 1999 and 2009,' many political activists inside and outside the U.S., including current reformists, were in direct and indirect contact with the U.S. State Department to convince the Obama administration to support the people. He wrote that during those days, some reformist political activists 'made exactly the same request to the U.S. politicians as we are making today to Donald Trump, namely, to sanction the corrupt generals of the IRGC and government elements involved in suppressing the nation.' However, the statement from the 317 political and civil activists asserted: 'Such approaches, whether in the past and before the revolution or after the 1979 revolution, are condemned regardless of which group or political current has carried them out, and the perpetrators must be held accountable before the Iranian people.' The signatories of this statement noted that the authors of the letter to Trump attacked the JCPOA and attempted to undermine this 'historic agreement,' characterizing the approach of these 30 individuals as reminiscent of 'the opposition of domestic autocrats and profiteers from sanctions, and the anger and fury of Saudi Arabia and Israel.' Batebi, in response to this statement, emphasized that 'nowhere in this letter is there any mention of the cancellation of the JCPOA, an attack on Iran, or blanket sanctions against the nation, similar to those imposed on the Iranian people during Obama’s era.' In the letter from these 30 individuals, the nuclear agreement is referred to as a 'disastrous agreement.' In another part of his response, he wrote: 'The discussion of sanctions is about smart sanctions targeting the economic interests of the IRGC, not the cancellation of the JCPOA or the indiscriminate sanctions against the nation that have been imposed until now.' The history of sanctions against Iran in recent years, which has often been emphasized as being smart, contradicted the findings of Ahmad Shaheed, the former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran. Ahmad Shaheed emphasized in the fall of 2013 that banking problems hindered the export of medicine and medical equipment to Iran and quoted the Hemophilia Association as reporting that nearly 7,000 hemophiliac patients were at risk of drug shortages. Ahmad Shaheed even described gasoline sanctions as 'causing increased pollution in Iran.' The 317 political, civil, and journalistic activists who signed this statement further accused the authors of the letter to Donald Trump of being eager for 'escalation of tensions and the imposition of sanctions and possibly military confrontation.' The signatories of this statement described the current generation of political and social activists in Iran as committed 'to advancing political matters and democratic efforts through conventional and peaceful means,' stating that this generation 'does not take up arms and does not justify or promote violence, preferring limited and lasting results over devastating solutions.' The authors of this statement emphasized that they will never tolerate 'inviting foreigners to intervene in Iran's affairs' and firmly condemned the 30-person letter to Donald Trump, which they described as 'prepared out of desperation and calling for foreign intervention in Iran's affairs.' Previously, three reformist political activists, Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari, Minister of Interior in Mohammad Khatami's government, Abdollah Ramazanzadeh, spokesperson for Khatami's government, and Azar Mansouri, a member of the Central Council of the Union of Iranian Nation Party, had reacted to the letter from Iranian political activists to Donald Trump in interviews with domestic media. Among the signatories of the 317-person statement are several political and ideological prisoners and detainees from recent years, such as Hamid Reza Khadem, Behzad Arabgol, Mahdieh Golroo, Milad Fadaei Asl, Mehdi Afsharnik, and Mehran Faraji. Parvin Fahimi, the mother of Sohrab Ebrahimi, one of the victims of the 2009 protests, Ebrahim Nabavi, a writer and satirist, Ehsan Mansouri, a former student activist, and Azar Mansouri, a reformist political activist, are among the other signatories of this statement.