Stephen J. Rapp, The Washington Post, July 24, 2025
Excerpts:
As a former international prosecutor, I am compelled to speak out against a pattern of escalating human rights violations in Iran, a pattern that evokes the darkest chapters of that country’s history and demands a sustained international response. At stake is not only justice for the victims, but also the world’s credibility in preventing mass atrocities.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has never hesitated to use lethal force against dissent. A stark example came in 2019 when hundreds of Iranians were gunned down for protesting fuel price hikes. Despite international outcry, that bloodshed was a prelude, not a climax.
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This month, the Fars News Agency — a mouthpiece of the Revolutionary Guard Corps — published a chilling editorial heralding the death commissions as a “successful historical experience”. Calls for renewed purging of political dissidents have followed. Three activists allegedly linked to the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, a prominent dissident organization — Farshad Etemadi-Far, Masoud Jamei and Alireza Mardasi — were sentenced to death in July. The charge: moharebeh, the same justification used by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1988. Hundreds of other cases are pending.
In 1988, Iranian activists attempted to raise alarms throughout the international community as the groundwork was being laid for mass executions. Most Western officials chose to ignore the calls to action. The danger emerging with the latest executions and politically motivated arrests is not just that Iran will perpetrate another massacre, but that the world will repeat its failure in allowing it to happen.
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We should not be under any illusions about what such moves will be able to achieve in the near term. Iran was already isolated before its 1988 massacres, and yet the regime survives to this day, under varying degrees of censure for its well-documented human rights abuses.
This is, however, no excuse for inaction. As someone experienced in bringing war criminals to justice, I know accountability is slow but never impossible. Iran’s rulers may rely on impunity today, but with sustained international effort, tomorrow they can face justice — either before their own citizens or at an international tribunal yet to be convened.
Stephen J. Rapp was chief of prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone. He served as U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes issues from 2009 to 2015.