Nearly two weeks after the controversy about the disappearance and possible death of Saudi Journalist Jamal Khashoggi during a visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Iran has not reacted to the case.
Tehran could have easily used such a big international issue as propaganda leverage against Saudi Arabia; its regional rival and enemy.
Even the Iranian state TV which is controlled by the office of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and IRGC-linked media outlets such as Fars and Tasnim News Agencies and Javan newspaper have been conspicuously silent about Khashoggi's disappearance.
Perhaps it is because Iran and Saudi Arabia's leaders share the view that they are entitled to murder their opponents anywhere in the world. On the other hand, both states believe other countries should not intervene when Tehran or Riyadh violate human rights.
On the other hand, Iran is currently in the spotlight because of the involvement one of its diplomats in a plot to attack a gathering of the Iranian opposition group Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK) in Paris.
Iran's silence about Khashoggi's possible murder, is in sharp contrast with its propaganda stunt to take advantage of the execution of Saudi Shi'ite opposition figure Sheikh Nimr in 2016. Back then, not only Tehran went full force, blaring its propaganda against Riyadh, but mobs of pro-regime rabble-rousers were allowed to attack and burn the Saudi embassy in Tehran.
Passing a judgement on the Khashoggi case would have reminded the media of Tehran's similar behavior at a time when Iran certainly does not like international attention on its policy of assassinating Iranian opposition figures in other countries.
Iran has been accused and in some cases officially charged with assassinations, including the case involving an attack on Mykonos Restaurant in Berlin in September 1992 where Iranian agents killed Kurdish opposition figures, most notably Sadeq Sharafkandi.
One of the witnesses at the Mykonos Case, Abolghassem Mesbahi, was a former Iranian Intelligence Ministry operative, who also disclosed the government's plot to assassinate Hadi Khorsandi, a prominent satirist based in London.
One of the witnesses at the Mykonos Case, Abolghassem Mesbahi, was a former Iranian Intelligence Ministry operative, who also disclosed the government's plot to assassinate Hadi Khorsandi, a prominent satirist based in London.
Although observers thought the Mykonos case would dissuade Iran from following other assassination plots in Europe, Tehran continued with the mischief and killed several others in various countries throughout the 1990s.
In the 1980s, Iran unabashedly boasted about killing its opponents outside the country, but from late 1990s Tehran tried to distance itself from the murders although a series of assassination attempts took the lives of several Iranian politicians and artists including former Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar in France and outspoken TV artist Fereidoun Farrokhzad in Germany.
In the meantime, during the 1990s Tehran continued murdering intellectuals and writers inside Iran in a series of events that were later disclosed as "chain murders."
Yet another possibility is that Iran's reluctant stance in Khashoggi’s case is that Tehran does not attach any political significance to a renowned columnist while for instance in the case of Sheikh Nimr, Tehran had an opportunity to mark its strategic depth. Nimr was a dissident Saudi Shiite cleric and Tehran wanted to agitate the Shia in the region.
From Tehran's point of view, even Turkey's elaborate position on the case might be an attempt to claim Ankara's political authority and its ambition to have the upper hand in the region by humiliating Riyadh. At the same time, they do not rule out the possibility of Ankara seeking some concessions from Saudi rulers.
These reasons may have prompted Iran to contain its temptation to enter the blame game against Saudi Arabi and at the same time, make Riyadh indebted by not joining the West to exert more pressure on its troubled neighbor.
