Or just in Syria right now. No one makes too much fuss when they see an Iranian minister shaking hands with Assad, because, frankly, they don't expect anything better from the Iranians.
Iran is thought to have executed nearly 700 people in the first half of 2015, according to reports compiled by Amnesty International that far exceed the 246 deaths officially declared by authorities in Tehran.
The human rights charity says "credible reports" put the true toll for the period up to 15 July at 694 people, the equivalent of three executions a day, and nearly as many as were put to death in Iran in the whole of 2014.
Said Boumedouha, deputy director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa programme, said: "Iran's staggering execution toll for the first half of this year paints a sinister picture of the machinery of the state carrying out premeditated, judicially-sanctioned killings on a mass scale.
Iran's human rights situation worsening, says UN special rapporteur
Read more
"If Iran's authorities maintain this horrifying execution rate we are likely to see more than 1,000 state-sanctioned deaths by the year's end.
"The use of the death penalty is always abhorrent, but it raises additional concerns in a country like Iran, where trials are blatantly unfair."
The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has called on Iran to impose a moratorium on executions after two juvenile offenders were hanged in the past two weeks.
Ban said he was "deeply saddened" by the executions and recalled that Tehran had signed two international conventions outlawing the death penalty for children under 18.
"The secretary general reaffirms the opposition of the United Nations to the imposition of the death penalty, and calls on the government of Iran to establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty," said a statement from his spokesman.
Fatemeh Salbehi, a 23-year-old woman, was hanged in the province of Fars on 13 October after being found guilty for killing a man she had been forced to marry when she was just 16.
A week earlier Samad Zahabi was hanged in Kermanshah province for shooting a fellow shepherd when he was just 17.
UN human rights experts said Iranian authorities did not provide the required notice to Zahabi's family or lawyer before the hanging.
Ban said he was "concerned that these two executions reflect a worrying trend in Iran", where he said more than 700 people have reportedly been executed so far this year, including at least 40 publicly.
He said that was the highest total recorded in the past 12 years.
"The majority of executions were imposed for drug-related offences - crimes that do not meet the threshold of the 'most serious crimes' as required by international law," he said.
More than 160 juvenile offenders are believed to be on death row in Iranian prisons, according to Amnesty International.
Where the Hari Rud river bends north to form a natural border between Iran and Afghanistan, a patch of thick forest allows Iranian border police to remain unseen as they observe the activities of the villagers on the other side.
Residents of Kohsan district in Afghanistan's Herat province say that when they try to collect precious potable water on the barren eastern bank, the Iranian guards open fire. While the provincial government in Herat denied these allegations to Tehran Bureau, Kohsan authorities said that at least ten villagers have been shot dead at this spot on the Hari Rud, which lies at the centre of a simmering conflict over water rights. Repeated efforts to reach Iranian officials in Kabul, Tehran and New York were unsuccessful.
I have no idea why you thought this was a defense of the Iranian regime, or that I'd like to make one.
A 76-year-old British national has been held in an Iranian jail for more than four years and convicted of spying, his family has revealed, as they seek to draw attention to the plight of a man they describe as one of the "oldest and loneliest prisoners in Iran".
Kamal Foroughi, a businessman who was working in Tehran as a consultant for the Malaysian national oil and gas company Petronas, was arrested in May 2011 when plainclothes officers picked him up from his flat in the Iranian capital. They did not show a warrant for his arrest, according to his family.
Foroughi was held at the notorious Evin prison and eventually sentenced in 2013 to a total of eight years' imprisonment, which he is still serving in Evin. The news about his arrest has only just come to light after his family decided to break their silence.
"My dad's detention has been a total nightmare for all the family," Foroughi's son, Kamran, told the Guardian. "My dad has always strenuously maintained his innocence and we believe him. We are not aware of any evidence that justifies the espionage charge. My daughters have lived half their lives without seeing Grandpa and keep asking when he is coming home. All I can do is give them a hug."
The brother of Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post journalist detained in Iran and convicted in secret, described his brother's imprisonment as "cruel and inhumane" on Tuesday and called on the US government to take "any appropriate actions" to win his freedom.
Ali Rezaian told the Associated Press that the charges were "trumped up" and there was no evidence that his brother tried to access security information.
Iran's judiciary spokesman confirmed the verdict on state TV on Sunday, saying the ruling is eligible for appeal within 20 days, but gave no indication of what punishment the 39-year-old Iranian American journalist could face. Rezaian has been detained in Iran for 14 months on charges including espionage. He reportedly faces up to 20 years in prison.
5: I never thought that was what you were trying to do. I do realise that the whole "or so the mullahs would have you believe" thing was a joke, you know.
That's right, it was all a joke. You keep believing that.
It's not like hoder has had unambiguously pleasant treatment from Iran.