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The primary issue, in my mind, is that human rights should not be constrained by national boundries. If it is immoral to force American women to wear the chadoor, then it is equally immoral to force Iranian women to wear it. Yet, we seem not to care that Iranian women are having their rights violated in a manner we would find totally unacceptable within the United States.
The two plausible replies are the relativistic and the realpolitik answers.
The relativist would doubtless point out that we, as westerners, are hardly a source of absolute moral principles. Sure, we think that forcing women to cover themselves is wrong, but they think that exploiting women's sexuality in advertising is wrong. Who is to say which of us is right? Any answer you give is subjective, so why would one force any particular set of morals on another people?
The realist, on the other hand, would avoid the moral consideration entirely. It is not in the interest of the United States to go out of its way to end the mandatory veiling practice in Iran. Our nation is not being harmed in any way from the continuation of the practice and efforts to stop it might turn out to be very costly indeed... The safe decision, the decision in keeping with our self interest, is to avoid getting ourselves involved. "We don't have a dog in this fight"
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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
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