Baghi: US sanctions directly target Iranian people

Tehran - BORNA - In the letter, written in both Persian and English, Baghi condemned Washington’s move to intensify sanctions against the Iranian people and urged the UN human rights chief to make clear that civilians are the primary victims of what the United States has called “crushing and unprecedented sanctions.”

“I am fully aware that, in an intensely polarized and increasingly militarized political environment resulting from the policies of the United States government, appeals for the protection of human rights may not receive the attention they deserve,” Baghi wrote.

“Nevertheless, I expect that, to the extent permitted within your mandate, you make clear to the international community that the primary victims of what the United States calls ‘crushing and unprecedented sanctions’ are the people of Iran.”

Baghi said ordinary citizens have no special access to financial reserves, alternative economic channels or other means that could shield them from the consequences of such measures.

He also pointed to explicit statements by US officials indicating that one of the objectives of the sanctions is to impose severe pressure and hardship on the Iranian population in pursuit of Washington’s political objectives.

“If civilians are deliberately subjected to economic deprivation and unbearable hardship in the hope that they will become instruments of political change, then, from a human rights perspective, the line between political pressure and the collective punishment of an entire nation becomes deeply troubling,” he wrote.

“Ordinary people must never be treated as leverage for achieving geopolitical objectives. No political dispute, however serious, can justify policies that knowingly place the burden of confrontation on an entire civilian population.”

Baghi described such an approach as “one of the most indefensible and reprehensible forms of political conduct in the current international order.”

“I therefore urge your office to address this issue not merely as a matter arising within geopolitical confrontation, but as a vital question concerning fundamental human rights, human dignity and the protection of civilians,” he added.

Concluding the letter, Baghi stressed that the suffering of the Iranian people should not be overlooked amid geopolitical calculations.

“The rights and dignity of the Iranian people must remain at the center of international human rights discourse,” he wrote.

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