And so the process goes on. With the news that the latest talks between Iran and ‘the E3’ (Britain, France and Germany) have (surprise, surprise) broken down, the stage has been set for Tehran’s referral to the UN Security Council. Confirmation of this should be delivered on Monday when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meets to discuss a report on Iran’s non-compliant nuclear programme. Referral should, in turn, lead to punitive sanctions being placed on the Iranian government.

All of this is to be welcomed – indeed, the only misfortune is that it has taken so much time and so many failed ‘last ditch negotiations’ to reach this stage. The notion that Iran, under its present regime, might be given free rein to develop nuclear weaponry is utterly untenable. That this should be so, is not the product of any western desire to infringe Iran’s ‘national rights’ or ‘sovereignty.’ Rather, it follows from the logical proposition that this terrorist-supporting, archetypal ‘rogue state’ should not be allowed to equip itself with the most-devastating of weapons; all the more so, when its President talks bluntly of the need for Israel to be ‘wiped off the map.’

Given Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s personal background in Iran’s Basij movement (that produced the ‘child-martyrs’ of the Iran-Iraq war), and his recent statements as to the glories of martyrdom, the prospect of such a man with his finger on the nuclear button cannot be dismissed lightly. Suggestions that we might simply have to ‘live with’ a nuclear-armed Iran, or that Iran merely wishes to achieve strategic parity with Israel (with its not-so-secret nuclear stock-pile), should be weighed against the possibility that Ahmadinejad might, having attained a nuclear capability, decide to follow through on his rhetoric. Consideration should be given to the fact that the commendable ‘no first strike’ policies of western democracies seem somewhat redundant when set against a man apparently anxious to ‘martyr’ his entire country; the fear must be that Ahmadinejad might well consider this a relatively modest price – one certainly worth paying – for the destruction of Israel.

Against this background, it is something of an understatement to say that the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme is an ‘important’ one. And for once there is near unanimity within the international community that the programme cannot be allowed to proceed. Yet, even if there remain hopes that it can be successfully closed down, this will, at best, be a short-term interim solution for a much deeper problem.

There is a danger, however, that this reality is being obscured and that the nuclear issue is contributing to a distinct short-sightedness in the West where Iran is concerned. The high-level of attention that the nuclear question attracts has placed it at the centre of the West’s agenda with Tehran; meanwhile, other matters of enormous significance have been almost entirely sidelined.

These are issues upon which a progressive consensus of left and right can be built. A clear example of this came with the attempted strike of Tehran’s bus drivers at the end of January. This seminal event saw ordinary workers in Iran’s capital attempt to form an independent Trade Union (a move forbidden by the constitution of the Islamic Republic) and begin a strike, in order to press for better pay and working conditions. The response of the Iranian government was to arrest the organisers of the fledgling union in the days leading up to the strike. On top of that, those workers who had the audacity to ignore such intimidation and still turned up for the strike picket, were met by baton-wielding state security forces. As many as a thousand were subsequently arrested, many of whom continue to languish in prison to this day.

Despite this mass and blatant violation of the human rights of the Iranian people, however, the story of the Tehran bus drivers was almost totally ignored by the mainstream media (with the notable exception of Nick Cohen’s 12^th February article in the Observer). This, even though, as Cohen lucidly argues, the story ‘cuts through the nonsense about a clash of civilisations between ‘the West’ and the ‘Muslims’.’

Subject to similar criminal disregard is another issue to which the HJS has been trying to draw attention - the ongoing unrest in the south-western Iranian province of Khuzestan. Unfortunately, though, it seems that the only victims the mainstream Western media are interested in are those who suffer Western ‘oppression’. How else can the wilful neglect of the people of Khuzestan be explained?

Last week saw the authorities there carry out a series of executions of alleged ‘terrorists’. In each case, their ‘crime’ was involvement in the spate of bombings that have afflicted Khuzestan since June 2005, the most recent being the attacks on the local governors’ offices in the cities of Dezful, Abadan and Ahwaz. The heavily-edited ‘confessions’ of two of the men executed by public hanging, Mehdi Nawaseri and Muhammad-Ali Afrawi, were broadcast on state-run Khuzestan TV as proof of their guilt; no matter that such ‘confessions’ were probably obtained through torture and Afrawi, in particular, showed signs of having been drugged, as he struggled to read his prepared statement. No matter, either, that in spite of the executions, the bombings have continued (as witnessed by Friday’s attack) and are likely to do so in the future.

The reality is that the attacks are a direct response to the policies of the Iranian government in oil-rich Khuzestan. Determined to secure access to energy resources and to use Khuzestan as a launch-pad for interfering in Iraq (which it borders), Ahmadinejad’s regime has stepped up pre-existing repression of the province’s Ahwazi Arab population. Falsely accused of ‘disloyalty’ to the state, the Ahwazis have been exposed to abuses ranging from cultural repression to whole-scale ‘ethnic cleansing.’

Such policies eventually provoked an Ahwazi Intifada in April 2005, which saw Tehran briefly lose control of parts of Khuzestan. Thereafter, intermittent bomb attacks also began to occur against government buildings across the province. The response of the Iranian government was three-fold. Firstly, it sought to suppress all information on the uprising – an effort that saw al-Jazeera banned from Iran because of the coverage it gave to anti-government demonstrations and riots in Khuzestan. Secondly, oppressive measures against the local population were escalated. The Ahwazis, already one of the most economically and socially deprived ethnic groups in the Middle East, now faced widespread land confiscation, arbitrary detention and random summary executions (as documented by Amnesty International). Finally, Tehran began blaming ‘foreign governments’, notably the UK, for being behind the unrest.

This latter policy has seen leading Iranian officials, including the Foreign Minister and Ahmadinejad himself, accuse Britain of sponsoring Arab separatism in the region. Thus, prior to the recent executions, the governor of Khuzestan province, Amir Hayat-Moqaddam, said that the detained men had been recruited to act as ‘British Agents’ inside Iran, though in this instance the claim was later dropped. In response, the British government has whole-heartedly denied such allegations and it seems clear that they are merely part of the Iranian government’s efforts to mask the true cause of the bombings and the unrest in Khuzestan: their repression of the Ahwazi people.

The tragedy is that this crude strategy seems to be working. As with the case of Tehran’s bus drivers, the situation of the Ahwazi Arabs is barely considered ‘newsworthy.’ This, despite the fact that the Iranian government seems determined to hand us a role through their accusations of British involvement; such accusations and the proximity of Tehran's actions in Khuzestan to British troops in Southern Iraq, mean that the UK, whether it wants to be or not, is involved. In spite of this, our focus when it comes to Iran, and that of the broader western world, has remained doggedly fixed on the question of the country’s nuclear programme, to the detriment of all else. Unfortunately, it is the Iranian people who are suffering most as a result; they are being left to burn (or as the events of the last week show, hang), while the West fiddles around with the nuclear issue.

The Execution of Mehdi Nawaseri and Muhammad-Ali Afrawi