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For many, Jamal Khashoggi’s gruesome death at the hands of Saudi government-sanctioned gangsters has become a good time to debate the morals of doing business with authoritarians and theocrats. We shouldn’t fool ourselves into believing any Islamic state shares our values — though, of course, Democrats would never put it so starkly.

Then again, most of the loudest advocates for withdrawing from the Saudi alliance were themselves prepared to pay off the theocracy of Iran for merely dropping their nuclear plans, ignoring decades of terror and murder aimed at Americans and others. So when it comes to the issue of human rights or national virtue in Middle East, the Iran boosters shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Of course, Iranian treatment of journalists has been consistently appalling, as well. At least four have been murdered in Iran since 1997, probably more. Maybe they were hung next to gay men, adulteresses or dissidents that are regularly executed. Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian, was raped, tortured and murdered by Iranian officials in 2013. Hundreds more have been flogged and brutalized since the revolution by these boogey men.

Iran has been taking American hostages since 1979. The most infamous recent case was that of journalist Jason Rezaian, who was lucky to get out. Right now, though, Siamak Namazi, Baquer Namazi, Karan Vafadari and Afarin Neyssari are all naturalized American citizens sitting in jail cells in Iran. Right now an American named Xiyue Wang — not a journalist but a PhD candidate and researcher at Princeton University — is serving a 10-year sentence.

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