So we’ve found a ledge for our Iran policy, and are now doing our best to call it a mezzanine. Yesterday, the government announced the suspension of the Human Rights Initiative with Iran that both countries launched in 2018. The suspension is in protest at Iran’s violations of human rights since the killing of Mahsa Amini.

Reportedly, New Zealand is also exploring whether Iran can be excluded from the UN Commission on Women. Just what this would mean in practice is unclear. Iran is not one of the 41 countries that currently comprise the Commission’s executive board. Consistency may be the hobgoblin of small minds but… Afghanistan is a member of the UN Commission for Women’s executive board until 2024. Are we claiming that the situation for women and girls in Iran is worse than it is in Afghanistan? Bad as things are in Iran, life for women and girls under the Taliban would seem to be several degrees worse. Yet the Taliban will be sitting on the UN Commission for Women’s executive board for another two years.

Meanwhile… The Labour government is also investigating whether its recent legislation on Russian sanctions can be tweaked to include sanctions on Iran, given Teheran’s support for Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine. Amidst these kinds of symbolic gestures, we haven’t ended dialogue with Iran altogether by kicking out their ambassador. Good. Elsewhere, we treat the option for dialogue as being valuable. Despite the serious human rights abuses evident in Israel, Russia, Saudi Arabia and China, all of those countries continue to have a diplomatic presence in this country. Why make Iran an arbitrary exception?

For similar reasons, we haven’t followed the US, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and – more narrowly, Canada - and designated the Revolutionary Guards as being a terrorist organisation, and imposed personal sanctions on its leadership. That step may come. But it's not a club we would want to join, given the present membership.

No surrender

It is hard to imagine a country less likely to cave in to outside pressure than Iran. (Maybe only North Korea). Eighteen months after the Islamic Republic came into being, Iran was invaded by Iraqi forces led by Saddam Hussein. Iran counter-invaded Iraq, and the two countries fought a traumatic war that cost over a million lives before ending in a stalemate. Capitulation, in other words, isn’t in Iran’s DNA. That helps to explain the bravery of the protesters, but also the paranoid stubbornness of the regime. The regime has always seen itself as beset by enemies, external and internal.

Ultimately, the Revolution has discredited itself by its corruption and brutality, carried out in the name of religion. Thanks to their control of the economy and the smuggling routes, the mullahs and the leaders of the Revolutionary Guards have been well insulated from the desperate hardship that Western sanctions have inflicted on ordinary Iranians. Donald Trump meant it that way. He aimed to make life so miserable for the Iranians that they would revolt. It was Trump’s version of what Ronald Reagan had done to the Soviet Union, but with a higher death toll. (The Soviet Army didn’t turn its guns on the advocates of glasnost.)

As of yesterday, all of the 31 provinces in Iran were reporting anti-regime protests:

…Security forces clamped down on crowds which had gathered to mourn the death of teenager Nika Shakarami - appearing to fire tear gas as protesters threw stones. Last month, Shakarami was found dead 10 days after she was filmed burning her headscarf at a demonstration. Reports suggest several demonstrators have died at the hands of security forces in the past days.

The Guards leadership has now given the protesters a deadline – next Saturday – to end their demonstrations, or face the consequences. Clearly, the situation in Iran is about to get much worse.

Footnote One: Just as clearly, the Labour government felt it had to look like it was doing something. Its liberal supporters were demanding the government show solidarity with the brave Iranian protesters, and especially with the women on the front lines. The morality involved is still selective though. The same liberal sympathisers have not been calling for New Zealand to end its compliance with the US economic sanctions that have sharply reduced the living standards of the Iranian people, and helped drive them in desperation into the jaws of the regime.

Footnote Two: Arguably, we’d do more for ordinary Iranians by trading with them. Between 2016 and 2018 New Zealand had opened up a booming beef trade with Iran, before US threats forced us to give it up. Gradual liberalisation via trade was the logic behind the 2016 nuclear accord. It still beats calling for more sanctions, that (a) will not induce the leadership to change its ways, while (b) driving ordinary people to a desperation that gets them murdered. That’s not said to absolve the regime. But Iranians can’t survive much more of the current versions of Western “solidarity.”

Footnote Three: Talking of diplomatic fine lines… In the same small paragraph in her press statement, Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta managed to deplore both the actions of the Iranian authorities and the actions of its enemies:

Images of shots being fired into the crowd at Mahsa Amini’s 40th day mourning ceremony have shocked New Zealanders. The Shah Cheragh holy shrine in Shiraz was subject to a terrorist attack claiming over a dozen lives and injuring many more. We condemn this attack and offer our condolences to the victims.

Right. That recent bloody attack on the Shah Cheragh shrine sacred to Shia Islam was carried out by Sunni armed followers of Islamic State. By mentioning the two incidents in virtually the same breath, New Zealand appears to be sending a signal to Teheran that it is not oblivious to the fact that when it comes to Islamic State, we continue to share the same enemy.

Yet with typical bone-headed stubbornness, the regime is blaming even the Shah Chezagh attack on the protesters, for emboldening the forces of Islamic State. As the BBC reported yesterday:

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi linked yesterday's IS-claimed attack on a Shia shrine to nationwide protests - saying the "riots" were "paving the ground for terrorist acts."

Will the protests succeed? The regime has all the guns. The protesters have martyrs. The protesters may have become secularised, but the regime seems to be hellbent on making them part of the long Shia tradition of martyrdom.

Netball’s Golden Goal Attack

Well that didn’t take long. Barely a week ago, people were writing obituaries for Aussie women’s netball. That’s because Hancock Prospecting billionaire Gina Rinehart had just pulled her $15 million sponsorship of women’s netball in Australia, out of spite. The Aussie national women’s netball team – the Diamonds – had refused to wear Hancock’s logo, partly on climate change grounds, but mainly because of the mining company’s shameful history of violating the rights and sacred sites of Australia’s indigenous peoples. Reportedly, Rinehart’s father had even called for poisoning their water holes with sterility drugs.

How “woke” of the Diamonds’ players, some critics lamented. “It could be one of the biggest own-goals in the history of sports sponsorships,” RNZ darkly suggested. Hardly. Almost immediately, the Victoria Visit state travel agency has come up with a $15 million counter offer spread over the next five years. Great. So there needn’t be an existential conflict between morality and commerce after all. Maybe that’s because more and more corporates are realising that it makes good business sense to distance themselves from the Neanderthal social attitudes of their boardroom predecessors. Everywhere you look, yesterday’s “woke” is turning into tomorrow’s mission statement.

To bring all of that much closer to home… For years, we’ve been talking about the harm being done to society by alcohol and its marketing:

Social costs of alcohol harm have been estimated to be more than 3% of GDP….Children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable, as exposure to alcohol advertising is associated with earlier initiation of drinking and with drinking larger amounts and NZ research has reported 50% of alcohol abuse and dependence develops before the age of 20. Exposure to sports sponsorship is also associated with higher consumption in both children and adults.

So… To be consistent with the successful stance taken by the Diamonds, the All Black players should be thinking twice about their deal with Steinlager, just as the Black Caps should be re-assessing their deal with Tui Breweries. As the Diamonds have shown, players can make a difference. Evidently though, the National Party will drag its feet on this issue, given the chance.

Music playlist…

This random playlist speaks for itself… Although I have a particular soft spot for the Turkish psych-rock band Altin Gün, and for the palindrome effect of Tom Verlaine doing a song called “Always” and Alvvays doing a song called “Tom Verlaine”. Good song from the new Taylor Swift album, too.

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