The international community claims to live under the rule of law. It speaks endlessly of human dignity, universal values and moral responsibility. It issues declarations, adopts conventions and builds marble buildings dedicated to justice in The Hague, Geneva and New York. Yet when the Islamic Republic of Iran executes its citizens, shoots protesters in the streets, buries detainees in unmarked graves and terrorises families into silence, the same system suddenly develops selective blindness.
Centrifuges provoke emergency summits. Corpses provoke press statements.
Uranium enrichment triggers sanctions regimes so complex they require armies of lawyers. Mass funerals produce carefully worded diplomatic concern.
This is not a failure of information. It is not ignorance. It is a deliberate hierarchy of outrage.
The world does not care less because it does not know. It cares less because the victims are politically inconvenient.
Iran has not detonated a nuclear weapon. It does not possess a confirmed nuclear warhead. Its nuclear programme remains the subject of monitoring, negotiations and legal instruments under the Treaty on the Non Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Yet the Islamic Republic has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to kill its own citizens on a large scale.
During the protests of November 2019, sparked by fuel price increases, credible estimates from Reuters and human rights organisations placed the death toll in the hundreds and possibly above one thousand. During the nationwide protests following the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, the United Nations documented the killing of children, the systematic use of live ammunition against demonstrators, mass arrests and widespread torture. In subsequent years, executions accelerated, often following trials that lasted minutes and denied defendants meaningful access to legal counsel.
These facts are not disputed by serious institutions. They are recorded in reports by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
Yet the global legal and political response to these killings remains anaemic.
The reason is not legal complexity. It is political cowardice.
On the other hand it is pertinent to note that Iran is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This is not symbolic. It is binding law.
Article 6 protects the inherent right to life and prohibits arbitrary deprivation of life. Article 7 prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Article 9 prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention. Article 14 guarantees the right to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal.
When protesters are shot without warning, the right to life is violated. When detainees are beaten, electrocuted or sexually assaulted, the prohibition on torture is violated. When individuals are sentenced to death after secret hearings with state appointed lawyers who are not allowed to speak, the right to fair trial is annihilated.
Beyond treaty law, customary international law prohibits crimes against humanity. These include murder, imprisonment, torture and persecution when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population pursuant to state policy.
The threshold is legal, not emotional. It does not require genocide. It does not require war. It requires patterns of conduct.
Iran meets those legal elements with disturbing consistency.
Why no court ever touches Tehran?
The International Criminal Court exists precisely to prosecute crimes against humanity when domestic courts will not.
Iran is not a party to the Rome Statute. This alone does not create immunity. The Security Council may refer non party states to the Court, as it did with Sudan and Libya.
But Iran enjoys geopolitical protection.
China and Russia hold permanent seats on the Security Council. Both maintain strategic relationships with Tehran. Both treat human rights as negotiable currency. Both veto any attempt to internationalise accountability.
As a result, the machinery of international criminal justice never starts.
The law exists. The jurisdiction does not.
This is not a legal accident. It is a design feature of a system that subordinates justice to power.
Iran’s nuclear programme, by contrast, sits inside one of the most aggressively enforced legal frameworks on Earth.
The Non Proliferation Treaty imposes obligations. The International Atomic Energy Agency conducts inspections. Violations produce reports. Reports trigger resolutions. Resolutions trigger sanctions. Sanctions reshape entire economies.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action created verification mechanisms so intrusive that inspectors could track uranium particles invisible to the human eye.
Every centrifuge is registered. Every kilogram of enriched material is accounted for. Every deviation becomes a diplomatic crisis.
The legal infrastructure for nuclear control is immediate, technical and coercive. The legal infrastructure for preventing mass killing is rhetorical. This contrast is not about legal sophistication. It is about whose interests are threatened. A nuclear weapon challenges state security. Dead protesters challenge no border.
Western governments regularly proclaim that human rights are the foundation of their foreign policy. The European Union issues statements. The United States imposes targeted sanctions on judges and prison officials. Canada condemns. Britain expresses deep concern.
None of this alters behaviour.
Iranian security forces continue to fire on crowds. Judges continue to sign death warrants. Intelligence officers continue to extract confessions under torture. Families continue to be warned not to hold funerals.
The sanctions remain symbolic. The oil flows continue. The negotiations continue. Ambassadors remain seated.
The implicit message is devastatingly clear: Iranian lives are expendable so long as strategic stability is maintained.
The real crime is not hidden. It is tolerated
There is no legal uncertainty about what constitutes crimes against humanity. There is no factual uncertainty about what has occurred in Iran during multiple protest cycles.
The uncertainty lies only in political will.
International law was never designed to protect the powerless against the powerful. It was designed to regulate the behaviour of states in relation to one another.
When state interests collide with human lives, the bodies lose.
The global order does not fear Iranian graves because graves do not destabilise markets. Graves do not interrupt shipping lanes. Graves do not raise insurance premiums in the Gulf.
Nuclear weapons do. There is an unspoken contract at the heart of modern diplomacy. Iran may terrorise its population so long as it does not destabilise the nuclear balance. Executions are domestic matters. Uranium is an international crisis. This moral trade is never written down. It is simply practised.
And every time a negotiator sits across from an Iranian official without mentioning the prisoners on death row, the bargain is renewed.
Authoritarian governments learn quickly.
They observe that the international community punishes nuclear ambition more severely than mass murder. They see that killing protesters attracts statements while enriching uranium attracts aircraft carriers.
The lesson is simple: control your weapons programme carefully, and you may butcher your population with relative impunity.
This is the true legacy of selective enforcement. It does not merely fail victims but instructs their executioners.
Iranian families know this reality intimately. They bury children while diplomats argue over verification protocols. They receive bodies while sanctions committees debate technical exemptions.
To speak of international justice in this context is not merely dishonest. It is obscene. The world does not lack laws to stop the killing. It lacks the courage to apply them.
Until that changes, nuclear negotiations will continue to dominate headlines while unmarked graves quietly multiply.
Disclaimer
This article is a critical legal and political analysis based on publicly available reports from international organisations, treaty law and documented historical patterns. It does not allege criminal responsibility against specific individuals beyond what has been reported by recognised institutions. It is intended for informational, academic and journalistic purposes only and does not constitute legal advice or a definitive judicial determination of liability.