Pompeo reposted a chart in another tweet showing detainees over the past year in Iran, according to which the number of arrests increased several times over between December 2016 and December 2017.
The U.S. Secretary of State also tweeted about waves of arrests in Iran, including five thousand people during last December’s nationwide protests, 30 women protesting mandatory hijab, hundreds of Dervishes, dozens of environmental activists, 400 people in Ahvaz, and 30 farmers in Isfahan, writing: “All of these have been imprisoned by Iran’s criminal regime. The Iranian people deserve to have their human rights respected.”
Last December’s nationwide protests in Iran left at least 25 dead and hundreds wounded, with approximately five thousand people arrested.
The issuance of harsh sentences for those arrested during those protests has been accompanied by objections in recent weeks, with some students arrested in December now reporting heavy prison sentences being handed down to them.
In another tweet, Pompeo posted an image writing: “Nearly 30 percent of Iran’s youth are unemployed.”
The U.S. Secretary of State also wrote: “The corrupt Iranian regime has invested in enriching the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah, and Hamas, and while Iranian families struggle, it has plundered the nation’s wealth on proxy wars outside of Iran.”
Islamic Republic officials have not yet responded to the U.S. Secretary of State’s latest remarks, though they have previously rejected similar accusations.
The U.S. Secretary of State’s tweets were published one day after an article by Iran’s Foreign Minister was released. Mohammad Javad Zarif, in his note responding to Mike Pompeo’s twelve conditions, raised a list of Tehran’s demands from Washington.
On the other hand, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic, while repeatedly referring to economic problems in Iran, has called the solution to these problems “resistance economy,” the meaning of which remains unclear.
He also asked parliament several days ago to set aside the bill on accession to international conventions, including countering money laundering and combating terrorism financing, and to “legislate independently on these matters.”
Ayatollah Khamenei has also emphasized that in negotiations with European countries regarding the fate of the JCPOA, Europe “must guarantee” that it will not address two issues: Iran’s missile programs and its activities in the region.
