In Iran, the Real Sexual Torture

While Nicholas Kristof recently published in the New York Times his baseless accusation that the IDF engages in sexual torture, including his claim that Israeli soldiers “train dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners,” the real victims of sexual torture in the Middle East are to be found elsewhere.

These are the prisoners that the Islamic Republic of Iran holds in Evin Prison and similar torture houses. And the New York Times, that continues to defend Kristof’s infamous column and to accuse his critics of trying to “stifle journalism,” when all they are trying to do is to point out his lies, has failed completely to report on the sexual torture inflicted on prisoners in Iran.

More on that torture can be found here: “Iranian men and women describe horrific abuse at the hands of regime guards specialising in ‘sexual torture,’” by Eliana Silver, Daily Mail, May 17, 2026:

Detainees in Iran’s prisons are being subjected to beatings, rape and psychological abuse, according to testimonies that lay bare the lengths the Islamic Republic will go to crush dissent.

Despite the regime’s long-standing reputation for brutality, accounts of sexual violence and intimidation reveal a particularly disturbing pattern of abuse.

In a harrowing account to The Australian, a woman identified as Mina, a pseudonym, described her experience inside one of Iran’s notorious prisons.

‘They repeatedly struck my head with a Koran so hard that my nose began to bleed. The interrogator also touched my body under my clothes while using disgusting sexual language, and repeatedly asked which newspaper editors I had slept with.’

She added: ‘He told me, “I will bring your 12-year-old son here and make him rape you. Then you will confess on television”.’

Such accounts are not isolated, with a report by Amnesty International last month finding that thousands of Iranians are at risk of sexual violence, with children as young as 14 among those assaulted by IRGC-linked forces during the January protests.

Evidence suggests this pattern stretches back decades.

Researcher and former political prisoner Iraj Mesdaghi has documented abuses from the 1980s, including testimony from a 14-year-old boy tortured by Mohammad Mehrayin, known as the ‘Butcher of Evin’….

The mainstream media in the United States — television, radio, newspapers, news sites online — should have reported on so many cases of sexual torture in Iran, that so many different sources have reported on, including those who were its victims, but until now their stories have received very little attention. Why is that? And why has Nicholas Kristof, with his great interest in the use of sexual torture, and his bully pulpit at the most prestigious American newspaper, not provided a single report on how that torture has been inflicted on prisoners, including children, in Iran?

AUTHOR