8 Iranian Officials Sanctioned by the United States

The United States have made it their job to oversee and help out governmental systems in Iran. Last year, 2009, Iran had an election for a new President, however, angry crowds mobbed the streets of Tehran to protest the elections. There were 8 Iranian officials that played a huge role in the bloody suppression of anti-government activists against these elections. In The New York Times, U.S.'s Secretary of State (Hilary Rodham Clinton) and Treasury Secretary (Timothy F. Geithner)"accused the men of ordering the arbitrary arrests, beating, torture, rape, blackmail and killing of Iranian citizens in the violent crackdown since the June 2009 election." (Landler 2010)
Why are the United States getting involved with affairs in the country of Iran? The first reason is that this country is trying to promote and expand the idea of human-rights on an international level. Any impingements on human-rights in the United States is unacceptable and not tolerated, and the victimizers are punished. Having this philosophy, the U.S. wants other countries to adopt a similar mind set and will in turn given support to those countries. As a result of the attempt to advance this philosophy, the United States has acknowledged human-rights abuses as the basis for these sanctions and have frozen foreign assets and denied visas to all of the 8 arbitrators. The other reason as to why the United States insists on heavy involvement with Iran is to keep an eye on the nuclear activities in Iran. Even though the United Nations attempts to oversee nuclear activities around the world, it does not necessarily prevent countries from engaging in producing nuclear power. This outlook on nuclear affairs has links to those 8 affiliated people which include, the commander of the Islamic revolutionary guard corps, the minister of welfare and social security, and other intelligence officials. Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander of the guard corps has already been identified by the United States for his involvement in the nuclear program and therefore the U.S. made sure that he was included in one of those being sanctioned and stripped of privileges, and it gave permission to the United States to further investigate their findings in nuclear activity.
"Iranian human-rights and democracy advocates have long pleaded with the United States to concentrate on rights abuses, expressing frustration that it looked at Iran only through a nuclear lens. Analysts noted that the United States has long criticized human-rights abuses in countries like the Soviet Union, with which it was also engaged in sensitive nuclear negotiations."(Landler 2010) Iran is concerned that the United States is only helping out affairs in Iran for the U.S.'s own personal gain so they can have control in the nuclear war. As stated in this quote, the United States had to engage in a similar action with the Soviet Union in order to continue being the leader in the nuclear war. I think that by the United States taking this action in affairs against the 8 Iranian officials is an example of progress learned by the United States and the Obama administration. It is a step forward for public relations of the United States with the Middle East because its efficient response to the political upheaval in the Middle East, in this case with Iran. I think that the United States need to show more that they are sincerely concerned with bettering countries for their internal affairs rather than coming off as trying to peer into nuclear activities of other countries.
In our reading for this week in the book, The Basics of Social Research by Earl Babbie, it discussed the different types of samplings that are used in research. The one type of sampling that would be useful to study thinking of actions taken by The United States by Iranians would be to get a purposive sampling which is, "a type of nonprobability sampling in which the units to be observed are selected on the basis of the researcher's judgment about which ones will be the most useful or representative. (Babbie 207) So, to carry out this sampling I would ask questions directed specifically to Iranians, instead of people from other countries, because their input would be the most useful and applicable for the research. We learned about the term "informant" which is a member of the group who can talk directly about the group per se. Informants would be good tools to use for research because it could create input necessary for conducting a study.