Must end Middle East silence

Sir, - The silence concerning the current unrest in Iran from those such as Jeremy Corbyn who are eloquent in their denunciations of Israel and all Western involvement in the Middle East is instructive.

The Iranian regime has always had an appalling human rights record.

The suppression of multi-million-strong protests after the disputed presidential elections in 2009 are well known, as are the killings of many thousands of political prisoners in the 1988 prison massacres.

Indeed, the regime still prevents family members, such as the Mothers of Khavaran, mourning those executed and denies the killings even took place.

Those protesting about corruption and the decline in living standards have not been slow to realise the connection with Iran’s expensive involvement in the conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, and its obsession with the Palestinian cause.

One can speculate how the regime has spent the tens of billions of dollars released to it as a result of Obama’s nuclear agreement, but it is clear that it wasn’t spent on improving the lot of the Iranian people.

The regime will doubtless survive these protests unscathed.

How can it be otherwise, when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps acts as a state within a state, defending the Islamic revolution from the Iranian people?

It is high time that Jeremy Corbyn and progressive opinion in general took a proper interest in the current oppression in Iran and ceased obsessing about Israel. Otto Inglis. 6 Inveralmond Grove, Edinburgh.

I am shocked and surprised that the president of the most powerful country in the world has his finger on the nuclear arsenal which includes weapons thousands of times more destructive than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki