The Sconi

Sen. Ron Johnson recently criticized his opponent Mandela Barnes for a tweet from 2015 when Barnes responded to Iranian leader Ali Khamenei for his post about Black Lives Matter. Khamenei has been accused of human rights violations for decades including the current unrest and protests from women in Iran.

“Mandela Barnes cannot be trusted with foreign policy in the Senate. He praised Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, defended Bashar al-Assad and went on Russian television to criticize American police officers. He does not have the judgment to be a senator,” Johnson said in an Oct. 20 Twitter post.

Khamenei tweeted in favor of the Black Lives Matter movement to which Barnes, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin, liked his tweet and responded with a tweet of his own: “The first tweet of 2015 from @khamenei_ir is #BlackLivesMatter. Let that sink in. May this be a most wonderful year for you and yours.”

According to Reuters in 2017, Khamenei, the supreme leader and Ayatollah of Iran, said the United States is Iran’s “No. 1 enemy.”

On Monday, according to a European Union (EU) press release, the EU sanctioned certain perpetrators in Iran in accordance with the country’s human rights violations, including the death of Mahsa Amini. Current human rights sanctions include travel bans, asset freezes, a ban on exports and ban on certain equipment. The EU condemns Iran’s continuous violation of human rights, especially Iranian law enforcement’s brutal handling of protests, which sprung from Amini’s death. The EU says the Iranian government's human rights abuses are “unjustifiable and unacceptable.”

According to CBS News, a female Iranian athlete, rock climber Elnaz Rekabi, competed in an Asian climbing contest in Seoul, South Korea and did not wear her hijab, which Iran International English said she was “disobeying the Islamic Republic’s restrictions for female athletes,” in an Oct. 16 Twitter post. The woman has since gone missing, CBS reports. Many Iranian women have been protesting against their government, not wearing the hijab, in response to Mahsa Amini's death under the custody of the Iranian Morality Police.

CNN reports that Iranian civilians are being kidnapped and tortured for the crime of speaking out against the Iranian regime. One man details his capture and inhumane treatment where Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps abused him psychologically and physically. CNN says this man’s experience is not a stand-alone case and many more are occurring with the unrest in Iran. CNN claims Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been ordering and overseeing such arrests and torture for decades. He attempts to silence protestors and those who disagree with the regime through human rights violations, torture and mass arrests.