International Developments: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-21
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Liam Quaide (SD), Cork East

I want to use my time today to express my deep respect and admiration for the peaceful protesters who took to the streets in Iran in recent weeks. They are ordinary citizens who have shown remarkable courage in standing up to tyranny, repression and extreme state violence. These are people who protested knowing the cost. They protested facing a terrifyingly high risk of imprisonment, torture and death. Yet they persisted with dignity and an unyielding demand for freedom, equality and basic human rights. Their struggle is a rejection of tyranny and of a system of entrenched patriarchal oppression that has for decades denied women autonomy over their bodies or access to basic freedoms, and has persecuted and murdered people from the LGBT community just for who they are.
The response of the Iranian regime to peaceful dissent has been a savage campaign of state terror and a bloodbath designed to quell any further appetite for protest. Demonstrations have been met with arbitrary detentions, torture and mass killing. Judicial proceedings have taken place which are, essentially, a wholesale denial of due process. We also cannot forget the many people who have been abducted and detained for years in appalling nightmarish conditions by the Iranian state, including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other western nationals who have been held as political hostages and used as leverage in international disputes.
Nazanin was only released in 2022 after almost six years of agonising separation from her young daughter and husband. Her detention became emblematic of a system in which human beings are treated as bargaining chips, with her freedom finally secured only after a long-standing £400 million UK-Iran debt being resolved. Other detainees have never re-emerged from the regime's squalid and brutal prison system. Their plight, without due process, transparency or contact with loved ones, lays bare the regime's profound contempt for human dignity, the rule of law and international norms.
It is also important to acknowledge the role played and the responsibility borne by international actors. The US President, Donald Trump, publicly encouraged Iranian protesters to come out onto the street, assuring them of international support. Those words carried weight. They no doubt raised expectations and they increased risk yet when the crackdown continued, that show of solidarity failed to materialise in any meaningful way and that failure amounted to reckless neglect, leaving peaceful protesters exposed to extreme violence after being urged forward without protection, backing or consequence for those responsible.
In international debates we must be crystal clear and morally consistent. We must always stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and defend their rights under international law. They have been subjected to genocide, ethnic cleansing and ever escalating cycles of state terror by the Israeli regime. However, support by the Iranian state for Palestinian causes does not absolve it of any responsibility for its actions against its own citizens. Tyranny does not become acceptable because it cloaks itself in the language of resistance.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-31T01:00:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-21