US should sanction Iran’s higher education minister

In July, Iran sentenced scores of students to lengthy prison terms for peacefully protesting against the clerical regime. These punishments, which follow the arrests of more than 150 student demonstrators since nationwide protests began in late 2017, prompted fierce denunciations on Iranian campuses. Nearly 70 student associations issued a joint statementproclaiming that they will not permit “the totalitarian forces to target freedom and liberty again.”

The Trump administration, for its part, has rightly condemned the sentences. But rhetoric is not enough. To send a stronger message to Tehran that its miscarriage of justice will carry a price, Washington should sanction Mansour Gholami, the minister of science, research, and technology, who presides over Iran’s higher education system. The fate of Iran’s young protestors reflects his ministry’s decades-long campaign of repression against Iranian students, who routinely face imprisonment, expulsion, and denial of admission for defying Tehran’s radical Islamist ideology.

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Tzvi Kahn is a senior Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on Twitter @TzviKahn.

Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD. FDD is a Washington-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.