The U.S. government has quietly decided to stop funding the tabulation of human rights abuses in Iran by an expatriate group in Massachusetts, the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center.

Since no announcement has been made, it isn't known why the Obama Administration has reversed the policy of the Bush Administration. Many opposition figures in Iran, however, opposed the Bush policy of funding some opposition groups, saying the policy brought all opposition groups under suspicion. The Human Rights Documentation Center, however, is an American organization and does not operate in Iran.

In the past five years, the group has received about $3 million from the U.S. government. Rene Redman, the group's executive director, had asked for more than $2.7 million for the next two years. The plan was to use the funding to investigate Tehran's harsh response to protests after the June 12 election. Redman told The Boston Globe, "If there is one time that I expected to get funding, this was it. I was surprised [at the denial of funding] because the world was watching human rights violations right there on television."

Senator Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Independent, said, "The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center is at the forefront of pioneering a vitally important work. It is disturbing that the State Department would cut off funding at precisely the moment when these brave investigations are needed most."

Ted Galen Carpenter, the vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, a conservative policy research center in Washington, sees the de-funding as a gesture to put Washington's good will on display as it starts negotiating with Iran.

"It's a relatively minor concession, all things considered," Carpenter told Radio Farda. "Programs like that are more designed to make Americans feel noble and honorable than they are actually designed to achieve results. And what the Obama Administration has done, I think, is return to the more mainstream approach in U.S. foreign policy, which is to focus on the external behavior of troublesome regimes, not on the internal behavior."

Cutting the group's funding "is an essential precondition to make any progress on issues that are far more important to the interests of the United States," he says. "In other words, for America's security and well-being, we need to be far more concerned about Iran's behavior on the nuclear issue, and also on such matters as Tehran's policy toward a fragile Iraq and an even more fragile Afghanistan, where we have major military commitments."

Although this gesture does not guarantee Iran will negotiate in good faith, Carpenter argues that making no concessions probably would lead to fruitless talks between the two countries.

Critics of the decision say the funding cut is a step backwards. Omid Memarian, a researcher for Human Rights Watch's Middle East/North Africa Division, told Radio Farda: "I think for the United States the nuclear issue has the first priority and human rights are considered as a domestic issue for Iranians. But we are living in a global world, and as we care for people in Darfur and people in Bosnia, we should care about people in Iran and the way they are treated by their government."

Conceding that "the Obama Administration is in a very tricky situation," Memarian said. "On one hand, Iran's nuclear program is a matter of international security and the concern of many countries. On the other hand, the brutality of the Iranian government after the election should not be forgotten. And I think [Iran and the United States] can talk about both issues at the same time, and it's not like they first have to talk about the nuclear issues and then talk about human rights."

The Human Rights Documentation Center is not without controversy. A few years ago, Ramin Ahmadi, one of its founders and a current board member, gave a workshop in Dubai on tactics of underground political resistance. Iranian citizens had been quietly brought to Dubai to attend. That led Tehran to label Ahmadi as "an agent of the United States."

The Globe quoted Roya Boroumand, executive director and co-founder of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation and a board member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, as saying, ''If the rationale is that we are going to stop funding human rights-related work in Iran because we don't want to provoke the government, it is absolutely the wrong message to send. That means we don't really believe in human rights, that the American government just looks into it when it is convenient."