Iran

VOA’s Persian Service has expressed shock and grief at the suicide of a former colleague, Kianoosh Sanjari, who jumped to his death from a building in Tehran on Wednesday in protest against Iran’s authoritarian rulers.

Sanjari, a 42-year-old Iranian, was a former journalist and rights activist who worked at VOA Persian’s Washington bureau from 2009 to 2013 before returning to Iran in 2016 to care for his parents.

Sanjari had been jailed in Iran for his activism before and after his work in the United States. He spoke publicly about how he suffered psychological harm from solitary confinement and other ill treatment by Iranian authorities.

VOA Persian Service Director Leili Soltani wrote on Instagram that she and her staff are “heartbroken and deeply affected” by the loss of their former colleague.

“This devastating loss has been extremely difficult and shocking for everyone at VOA Persian, especially for those of us who worked closely with him,” Soltani wrote. “Kianoosh was only 17 when he was arrested, tortured and kept in solitary confinement. Though he is gone, his passion for freedom and human rights will live on.”

VOA Director Michael Abramowitz said he also was “deeply saddened” to learn of Sanjari’s death.

“Kianoosh, a former VOA journalist & a man who loved his country, suffered imprisonment & faced severe repression from the Iranian regime that ultimately led to his passing. He will be deeply missed,” Abramowitz wrote in a post on the X platform.

Responding to a VOA query, a State Department spokesperson said the Biden administration is “saddened” by Sanjari’s death and expresses condolences to his family.

“His and other recent youth suicides in Iran indicate growing despondence on the part of Iranian youth with a regime that suppresses their most basic human rights,” the spokesperson said in an email.

“We again call for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners detained in Iran without just cause. The Iranian regime’s campaign to silence critics and human rights activists must stop,” the U.S. official said.

Sanjari had posted a message on his X account early Wednesday saying he would end his life in protest of the “dictatorship” of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei if judicial authorities did not announce the release of four political prisoners by 7 p.m. that day. No such announcement came.

At 7:20 p.m. Wednesday, he made two more posts on his X account, one of them a photograph taken from the terrace of Tehran’s Charsou shopping mall complex showing a bridge and the street beneath him. In the other, Sanjari wrote that he would end his life after the post, in which he also said, “No one should be imprisoned for expressing their opinions. Protest is the right of every Iranian citizen.”

Video posted to social media shortly after Sanjari’s final social media posts showed the body of a man lying on a sidewalk beside the Charsou mall, as onlookers gathered and emergency service personnel arrived at the scene. Informed sources told VOA Persian that the body was that of Sanjari, who had jumped from the terrace to his death.

Iranian state news agency IRNA cited Judge Mohammad Shahriari, head of Tehran's Criminal Affairs Prosecutor's Office, as saying he has opened a “suspicious death” case related to Sanjari.

Before visiting the mall, sources told VOA Persian, Sanjari had been at his parents’ Tehran home, where several friends had visited him and believed they had dissuaded him from taking his life.

Sanjari’s death as an act of antigovernment protest has drawn expressions of sadness from other rights activists and journalists around the world.

“The Islamic Republic is undoubtedly responsible for this tragic death,” wrote Roya Boroumand, executive director of Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, a U.S.-based group dedicated to the promotion of human rights and democracy in Iran. In a statement sent to VOA, Boroumand said Sanjari was politically active after his release from prison, “campaigning for others languishing in prison and also against the death penalty.”

“He always held Iran dear in his heart and did not let the brutality of the Islamic Republic and strains of his personal life stop him from fighting against repression. By ending his life and the message he left behind, he reminded us of this bitter reality and condemned his oppressors and those who claim to be ruling on behalf of God,” Boroumand wrote.

VOA’s Persian Service contributed to this report.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi met Iran's top diplomat Thursday as he began crunch nuclear talks in Tehran weeks before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

During his first term in the White House from 2017 to 2021, Trump was the architect of a policy called "maximum pressure" which reimposed sweeping U.S. economic sanctions that had been lifted under a landmark 2015 nuclear deal.

Grossi, who arrived in Tehran late Wednesday, is expected "to negotiate with the country's top nuclear and political officials," Iran's official IRNA news agency reported.

Grossi described his meeting with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi as "indispensable" in a post on X. Araghchi was Iran's chief negotiator in the talks that led to the 2015 deal.

For his part, Araghchi said the meeting was "important & straightforward" and renewed Iran's commitment to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

"We agreed to proceed with courage and good will. Iran has never left the negotiation table on its peaceful nuclear programme," he said in his post.

Araghchi said Iran was "willing to negotiate" based on the "national interest" and "inalienable rights," but was not "ready to negotiate under pressure and intimidation."

Grossi also met the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Mohammad Eslami, the Tasnim news agency reported.

Later, the IAEA chief is expected to meet President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Grossi's visit is his second to Tehran this year but his first since Trump's reelection.

In 2018, Trump unilaterally abandoned the 2015 deal that gave Iran relief from international sanctions in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program designed to prevent it developing a weapons capability, an ambition it has always denied.

Search for solutions

The following year, Iran started to gradually roll back its commitments under the deal, which barred it from enriching uranium to above 3.65%.

The IAEA says Iran has significantly expanded its stocks of uranium enriched to 60%, a level that has triggered international alarm as it is much closer to the 90% level needed for a nuclear warhead.

Grossi "will do what he can to prevent the situation going from bad to worse" given the significant differences between Tehran and Western capitals, said Ali Vaez, an Iran specialist at the Crisis Group, a U.S.-based think tank.

Iran has blamed the incoming U.S. president for the standoff.

"The one who left the agreement was not Iran, it was America," government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said Wednesday.

"Mr. Trump once tried the path of maximum pressure and saw that this path did not work."

Grossi's visit comes just days after Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Iran was "more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities."

The arch foes have exchanged unprecedented direct attacks in recent months as tensions have soared during the intensifying war between Israel and Iran allies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Trump's looming return to the White House in January has only added to international fears of all-out conflict between Israel and Iran.

"The margins for maneuver are beginning to shrink," Grossi warned in an interview with AFP on Tuesday, adding that "it is imperative to find ways to reach diplomatic solutions."

Religious decree

Grossi has said that while Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon, it does have plenty of enriched uranium that could eventually be used to make one.

Iran's president, who won election in July on a platform to improve ties with the West, has said he wants to revive the 2015 deal.

But all efforts to get the nuclear agreement off life support have failed.

The IAEA chief has repeatedly called for more cooperation from Iran.

In recent years, Tehran has switched off surveillance devices used to monitor its nuclear program and effectively barred IAEA inspectors.

The foundations of Iran's nuclear program date back to the late 1950s, when the United States signed a civil cooperation agreement with the Western-backed shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

In 1970, Iran ratified the NPT, which requires signatory states to declare and place their nuclear materials under IAEA control.

But with Iran threatening to hit back at Israel for its latest missile strikes, some lawmakers have called on the government to revise its nuclear doctrine to develop an atomic bomb.

They called on supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who wields ultimate authority in Iran, to reconsider his longstanding religious edict or fatwa banning nuclear weapons.