TEHRAN – An Iranian lawmaker has said that the West uses issues related to human rights and women as a leverage at the negotiating table.

The lawmaker, Jalil Rahimi Jahan Abadi, who is a member of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, established a link between Iran’s removal from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women and the stalled negotiations over reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“The idea of the West in Iran's nuclear case was that it could put pressure on the Islamic Republic and force Iran into accepting its demands. But when it got into trouble in this plan, it put two strategies on its agenda. The first issue was spreading rumors about the sale of Iranian drones to Russia and involving the Islamic Republic with European countries. The second issue was associated with the planning of the riots, when highlighting human rights issues was placed on the agenda of Western governments,” he said in remarks to Iran’s official news agency IRNA. 

Underlining that the West sought to highlight human rights issues in Iran in the international community in order to increase international pressure against the Islamic Republic of Iran, Jahan Abadi said, “The ruling against the Islamic Republic by the United Nations Human Rights Council or the plan to remove Iran from the Commission on the Status of Women in the United Nations was carried out in line with increasing international pressure on the Islamic Republic.”

He added, “Maybe the conditions of women in the country are not ideal in various issues, but if we look at the issue fairly, the presence of women in social activities, universities and fields of medicine and engineering in the Islamic Republic is remarkable.”

The lawmaker continued, “European women did not have the right to vote in the 1960s. While after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, there were no restrictions on women's participation in political and social fields. Despite the fact that Iran's society was and still is religious, the Islamic Republic of Iran has shown courage in the face of internal religious spectrums and has borne many costs to fulfill women's rights.”

Saying that the aim of the West's recent games against Iran is to achieve success in the nuclear negotiations, he added, “The West did this to the former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, China and other countries that were against the West. This is the way of the West to use the tools of human rights, internal tensions, civil issues, minorities, youth as foreign policy tools and achieve the desired goals.”

He asserted, “If the West achieves its desired goals in nuclear negotiations, it will forget human rights and women's issues just as quickly. Because they have an instrumental view of the issues raised and international organizations are the tools of the Westerners against Iran.”

In a widely criticized move against Iran, the United States and its allies pushed for the removal of Iran from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).

The move has been repudiated as political and as an example of the U.S. pressing ahead with unilateralism at an international institution inherently meant to promote multilateralism. 

The U.S. and its allies pushed for a vote on removing Iran from the Commission on Wednesday. And Iran was voted out of the Commission after most members of the Commission chose to get along with the U.S. in ending Iran’s membership in the UN body.

Iran rejected the move as a “political heresy,” describing it as a political scheme that lacks legal credibility, runs counter to the UN Charter, and sets the wrong precedent in the international body. 

“Removing a legal member of the CSW is a political heresy, rids the international organization of its credibility, and sets a precedent unilaterally for future exploitations of the body,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said in a statement.

A group of Iranian female lawmakers has reacted to the removal of Iran from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, saying the move was “completely political” and “cruel.”

“While Western countries have been claiming to defend women's rights, according to statistics and international reports, they are the biggest violators of women's rights. These countries, in a completely political move and in the name of defending women's rights, ended the membership of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Commission of the Status of Women,” the statement said.