UN RAPS IRAN – AT 9:46 A.M. ET:  It doesn't happen often, but occasionally the UN gets it right.  We should celebrate the occasion.  From The New York Times:

The special United Nations investigator of human rights in Iran presented a highly critical report on Tuesday that contradicted the Tehran government’s own assessment, describing a record rate of executions, a deeply flawed judiciary and repression of journalists, dissidents, women and freedom of expression.

The conditions described by the investigator, Ahmed Shaheed, a former Maldives foreign minister and an expert on human rights in Muslim-majority countries, belied the image of moderation and eased constraints that President Hassan Rouhani of Iran has sought to project since his election in 2013.

In some ways, Mr. Shaheed said, Iranians are worse off than during the era of Mr. Rouhani’s polarizing and relatively conservative predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Amendments to a criminal procedure law, for example, impose new restrictions on access to legal counsel. Some defendants must now choose lawyers from a pool selected by the head of the judiciary.

“The human rights situation in the country remains dire,” Mr. Shaheed said in a briefing at the United Nations. Despite Mr. Rouhani’s pledge to lighten the repressive atmosphere that prevailed during the Ahmadinejad years, Mr. Shaheed said, there was a “strong disconnect between the professed policy of engagement and the behavior of authorities on the ground.”

It was Mr. Shaheed’s fifth report on Iran since he was appointed to the post of special rapporteur in 2011, and his first since the completion of a nuclear agreement in July between Iran and the major world powers, which will end many isolating sanctions on the country in exchange for guarantees that its atomic work is peaceful.

COMMENT:  Straight talk from an institution where straight talk is a special event.  So we've just rewarded Iran for its dismal human-rights record by signing a nuclear accord with Tehran and inviting the Iranian government to participate in talks on the future of Syria.   Brilliant, really brilliant.  The brain of Barack Obama at work.

October 29, 2015