Iran Feature: Arresting Lawyers --- Who's Next?

Early this year, I noticed a surprising trend. The Iranian government was moving from arresting people who were protesting to arresting people who were trying to defend the rights of protesters and ordinary Iranians.

This was shocking to me, as human rights activists had little to do with the post-election turmoil. They had been warning the government for years that they needed to make concessions to the populace or the people would erupt.

But I was missing a key point: human rights activists, like the protesters, are nonetheless messing up the regime’s propaganda: propaganda that not only claimed the legitimacy of a theocratic government theocratic but also that the people and anyone with a public voice was firmly behind the government. Apparently, human rights activists were not in this chorus, and so they must pay the price.

Now that most human rights activists are in prison, on trial, or forced to leave the country, the government is changing tactics again. This time it’s lawyers that are being targeted. Iranian dissident website Peyvand reported on Sunday:

Iranian authorities arrested another three female lawyers yesterday as they returned to Iran from Turkey. Sara Sabbaghian, Maryam Kianersi and Maryam Karbasi were arrested at Imam Khomeini Airport on unspecified charges, Majzoban-e Noor website reported.

Sabbaghian is said to be involved in the defence of detained Iranian blogger, Hossein Ronaghi and Kinaersi was on the defence team of Kobra Najjar who was saved from a death by stoning sentence two years ago.

Another lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh went on trial in Tehran on Monday: the three lawyers arrested at the airport, joining activists, had signed a letter in September demanding her release. Later, two more lawyers in Tehran were arrested because of their connection to the trio who were detained.

And before this, there were others. Mohammad Mostafaei fled to Norway to avoid Shirin Ebadi is in exile and another lawyer, Mohammad Seifzadeh, was just sentenced to nine years in prison. All these lawyers specialise cases related to human rights.

What this tells us is that the government is desperately trying to silence any unwelcome message, especially one highlighting dissent, from from getting out of Iran. The regime must maintain that protests are only by extremists, paid millions by the "West" .

So who’s the next target?

When the government has finish rounding up or exiling human rights lawyers, they will have dealt with three of the main dissenting factions, having already brutally suppressed protesters and human rights activists. So then it will be the politicians. And finally, it will be the untouchable clerics who have been opposing Ayatollah Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Facing that scenario, will those politicians and clerics be quiet as the lawyers are suppressed –-- as they were during the previous rounds of suppression --- or they will fight back before it’s their turn?