As negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program continue, the Iranian regime is once again oscillating between blackmail and seemingly benevolent gestures. This is a common regime tactic that has played itself out in the past, and the Biden administration needs to be careful not to be hoodwinked by Iran’s misleading ploys.

On Nov. 3, a new Iranian Supreme Court ruling negated the regime’s decades-old policy of jailing converts to Christianity and participants of underground churches. According to Iran’s Penal Code, proselytizing and conversion out of Islam are a violation of Sharia law and punishable with jail time and even execution. In reality though, this ruling is nothing less than lip service to Iran’s Christian community, as twenty Iranian Christians remain in prison for practicing their faith, and Farsi-language churches are barred from publicly opening their doors. More importantly, it is merely a fig leaf to the nuclear negotiators in Vienna and the regime’s attempt to show its humanity.

In Iran, Christian churches are not allowed to hold services in Farsi, which creates a natural barrier to isolate Christians and exclude curious Muslims from learning about the religion. In response to these draconian laws, those seeking to learn more about Christianity, or new converts wishing to pray in Farsi, have to turn to underground churches where they can worship in a language they understand, albeit at the risk of arrest and imprisonment.

Because the Iranian constitution does not require the court to follow legal precedent, the regime will likely not extend this ruling to other religious minorities — and it also can still be overturned.

This tactic by Iran dates back to the period of President Hassan Rouhani and his promise of moderation, when a new era of charm-driven diplomacy led to an easing of tensions with the US,  a departure from former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s erratic and overt tyrannical posture. Yet, while Rouhani’s administration was busy engaging in diplomatic outreach, the Iranian regime was continuing to pursue terrorist activities around the world, crushing the human rights of its own citizens, and holding American hostages in its prisons.

To help placate negative sentiments in the West, and perhaps also to dispel the regime’s antisemitic image, the regime promoted two symbolic gestures at home: In 2011, it invested around $400,000 in Iran’s only Jewish hospital, the iconic Dr. Sapir Hospital and Charity Center in Tehran. It is an institution that, with the mass exodus of the country’s Jewish community, remains Jewish in name only — and one that, like many of Iran’s establishments, was suffering financially.

Later in 2014, the regime unveiled a unique monument honoring the Jewish soldiers who had lost their lives in the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s.

These token gestures had absolutely no impact on the lives of Iran’s minorities, including its Jewish citizens, who are routinely forced to publicly demonstrate against Israel with chants of “death to Israel,” or Baha’i citizens forced to practice their religion in an underground network of schools and houses of worship.

And even while the negotiations proceeded, Iran continued to arrest and jail dual national citizens, perhaps in anticipation of a day when they would be needed as bargaining chips, a tactic commonly referred to as “hostage diplomacy.”

Today, as the US and Iran are engaged in another crucial round of negotiations, American-Iranian dual nationals Emad Shargi, Morad Tahbaz, and Bagher and Siamak Namazi are all being held in an Iranian prison (Tahbaz also is a citizen of the United Kingdom). Other countries are also struggling to secure the release of their citizens imprisoned in Iranian jails.

Domestically, Iran has continued persecuting its religious minorities by arresting, jailing, confiscating assets, discriminating against and even executing them. It has also launched a violent crackdown against protesters who are pleading for dignified living conditions, including farmers seeking access to clean water and average Iranians seeking the right to freedom of expression.

While conciliatory steps such as those towards Iran’s Christian minorities are always welcome in a repressive country like the Islamic Republic, the Iranian people know that these moments of detente are temporary, if not artificial, and a possible prelude to even worse circumstances.

As the Iran deal negotiations enter a decisive phase, the Biden administration must avoid succumbing to Iran’s charade of purportedly upholding basic human rights.  We have no reason to believe that the US will fall for Iran’s latest gimmick, but we cannot confidently say the same for all other world powers.

Having previously witnessed similar patterns of deception during previous rounds of negotiations, the US should recognize the true intentions behind the Iranian regime’s actions: a shameful ploy of using its own minority citizens as negotiation bait.

Sharon Nazarian is Senior Vice President for International Affairs at ADL (Anti-Defamation League) and Marjan Keypour Greenblatt is the founder of the Alliance for Rights of All Minorities ((@ARAMalliance). Nazarian is Chair, and Greenblatt is a member of ADL’s Task Force on Middle Eastern Minorities.

The opinions presented by Algemeiner bloggers are solely theirs and do not represent those of The Algemeiner, its publishers or editors. If you would like to share your views with a blog post on The Algemeiner, please be in touch through our Contact page.