Hamid Yazdan Panah is an attorney focused on asylum and immigration in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is also a human rights activist focused on the Middle East and Iran.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that Iran has secretly executed Kurdish political prisoner Saman Naseem, despite a global campaign to save his life. Naseem, was a member of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), a Kurdish resistance organization in Iran, and arrested when he was still a minor. He was convicted of moharebe, or, “enmity with God” and sentenced to death. Although there has been no official announcement by the Iranian government, reports indicate that the regime informed Naseem’s family that he had been hanged on Friday, and ordered them not to hold a funeral. The execution serves as another example of the Iranian regime’s willingness to flout international law during its ongoing war against Kurds and other ethnic minorities in Iran.

Hamid Azimi is the Communications Director for the Iranian American Community of Northern California. Azimi has been actively promoting Human Rights and democratic change in Iran, exposing and combating the Iranian Ayatollahs’ Islamic Fundamentalism. His writings and interviews have been covered by many California based news outlets as well as major national news agencies

From 2003 onwards, the Iranian regime’s influence has spread rapidly across the Middle East. The regime’s foreign policy is ambitious and seeks to expand Iranian influence in order to preserve power and fulfill ideological goals. Regime officials have admitted on record that Iran is fighting across the Middle East so that it doesn’t have to fight at home. While this aggressive, interventionist policy may be suitable for the regime, it is certainly damaging to the subjects of its meddlings and undermines global efforts towards peace and stability in the region.