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by mrkstu 2444 days ago
If Iran murdered an Iranian citizen in their own embassy in third country? No response at all except a shake of the head?

Iran regularly kidnaps dual citizens when they come to Iran and hold them without formal charges, and many disappear/die. The only reason this is a story is because we theoretically hold Saudi Arabia to a higher standard than Iran in the first place.

2 comments

>When they come to Iran.

This is different imo, an American resident was murdered in a third country. I can assure you if this happened nobody would be talking about how important it is to keep selling arms to Iran, the way we did with Saudi Arabia. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/opinions...

He had a work visa for the US. What I'm saying isn't defending Saudi Arabia, rather, that Iran is the last example to use to make the point, since they are regularly getting away with the same/worse in a variety of consequences with minimal blowback from the west (excepting occasionally the US), since we expect no more of them.

In fact having our OWN embassy ransacked and our diplomats kidnapped has to this day resulted in no effective consequences for the Iranian regime except economic ones.

An American resident? He wasn't a US "person" under US law. He didn't have a green card--H1 visa, perhaps?- and wasn't eligible for consular protection under the Vienna Convention. Trying to turn him into an American is silly.
He was a legal US resident. He had what's commonly called an Einstein Visa. He received his education in the US. He has children who are US citizens. He had a job in the US. He even paid taxes to the US.

How about you stop denigrating his personhood.

All people on US soil are protected by the US Constitution and bill of rights. It doesn’t matter if you’re citizen or immigrant; permanent or temporary resident; illegal or legal. Simply being on US soil means the US must acknowledge the rights that were granted to you by your creator (this is the way it’s phrased in our constitution)
Mississippi is arguing otherwise, after an undocumented immigrant was mistakenly killed in a raid: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/09/27/ismael-lope...
Howdy cow, if that belief is upheld, the repercussions are chilling. As the article mentions, if illegal immigrants are not protected by the constitution then they can be enslaved or killed without repercussions.
Arresting and imprisoning people within their own borders without formal charges is also a Saudi Arabian practice. And it's a far cry from murdering someone in one of their embassies in a foreign country.

Now, maybe Iran actually does do that? The difference is that they have to at least do a competent job covering it up because unlike KSA they don't act with complete immunity to any consequences or repercussions for their actions.