On November 6, 2019, Organization of the Iranian American Communities
(OIAC), held a congressional briefing in the U.S. Senate, to discuss the
rise of domestic suppression and regional aggression by Tehran as
anti-regime protests spread in Iran and intensify in Iraq and Lebanon.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), member of the Foreign Relations Committee and
Senator John Boozman (R-AR), Chairman of Senate Appropriations
Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related
Agencies, addressed the event. Other speakers included Soona Samsami,
Ambassador Robert Joseph, Ambassador Lincoln Bloomfield, Jr., Ambassador
Marc Ginsberg, and Professor Ivan Sascha Sheehan.
In his keynote remarks, Senator Cruz applauded the struggle for
democracy in Iran and said “The government of Iran has been under a
shroud of darkness for decades now. The Ayatollah Khamenei and the
mullahs enforce brutal repression on the people. And I will say to the
Iranian people, to the men and women of Iran: America is with you.
America is with you and your struggle against cruel, oppressive,
torturing, murderous tyrants. Freedom matters. I believe we can one day
again have a free Iran, not with the Ayatollah in power.”
The Texas senator added that “Two things are happening. One, the regime
is afraid of its people and this is the word of encouragement that I
want to give the men and women here: Dictatorships can seem very, very
strong until suddenly they’re not. The Ayatollah and the mullahs are
terrified of the people. They’re terrified of truth. And as they lose
the billions that have been funding their repressive regime, they are
more and more vulnerable to the people demanding freedom. But secondly,
in the process, we’ve seen them lashing out. We’ve seen them carry out
acts of war attacking their neighbors, Saudi Arabia, attacking the oil
facilities there and doing major damage to their production capability.
Unequivocal act of war carried out by Iran, lashing out as the regime is
becoming desperate to hold on to power… the Ayatollah and the mullahs
are much, much weaker than many believe at the time.”
“The Obama Iranian nuclear deal was the most profoundly fool-hearted
foreign policy deal of the modern age, giving billions of dollars to an
ayatollah who is laughing and proclaiming his intent to wage war with
that money. The government of Iran is the world’s number one and leading
state sponsor of terrorism. Those dollars under the Obama Iran nuclear
deal went straight to murdering Americans, to murdering American
servicemen and women, to murdering innocent civilians, and to murdering
our friends and allies,” remarked Senator Cruz regarding the 2015 Iran
nuclear deal.
Senator John Boozman
recognized the great work of the Iranian community in the state of
Arkansas and their effort to raise public awareness on the situation in
Iran adding how it is important to make the connection across the United
States by sharing the personal stories of Iranian diaspora. He said, “I
welcome you being here to talk about the importance on how to move
forward and continue the pressure on the regime in Iran.”
Ms. Soona Samsami, US representative of the National Council of
Resistance of Iran (NCRI), emphasized how “the mullahs have stepped up
repression and executions in Iran, and export of terrorism and
warmongering in the region. Unfortunately, decades of silence and
inaction vis-à-vis the regime’s aggressions had emboldened the mullahs.”
She added the “moment has now arrived for the elected representatives
of the American people to declare their unequivocal support for the
Iranian people’s demand to overthrow the clerical regime and to hold its
officials accountable for their crimes and terrorism.”
Ambassador Robert Joseph also acknowledged how the people of Iraq and
Lebanon “are fed up with the endemic corruption, the repression, and the
malfeasance of the Iran-backed political order.” He added, the “MEK’s
presence at the center of the NCRI – the opposition’s
parliament-in-exile, makes the NCRI a viable and formidable alternative
to the mullah’s tyranny. The very existence of this alternative, and its
platform of a free, democratic, secular, and non-nuclear Iran,
represents an existential threat to the clerical dictatorship that
controls the people of Iran through fear and brutality.”
Ambassador Ginsberg noted that the Iranian people, just like the people
of Iraq and Lebanon “want to see this regime gone.” He added the
mullahs’ regime “has fed its terrorist activities on the backs of the
Iranian people and we hope that when next year rolls around this regime
will no longer be in a position to engage in the activities that it is
engaging.”
Ambassador Bloomfield
stressed how the Iranian regime has been considered as the most active
state sponsor of terrorism by the State Department since 1984. Detailing
the regime’s tactics at home and abroad, he added in Iran “we have seen
the nationwide protests calling for political change since December
2017. And now we see people taking to the streets in Lebanon and Iraq –
in both cases, demanding that they have a constitutional government free
from Iranian influence.”
Professor
Ivan Sascha Sheehan noted the “Iranian people will be the architects of
the next Iranian Revolution” adding his assessment of the MEK in their
new home at Ashraf 3 in Albania as a “cohesive, organized political
opposition movement, with a long history of struggle against
fundamentalism and dictatorship, guided by gifted female leadership,
with a well-defined political platform, and an intricate network of
passionate supporters inside Iran and across the world eager to topple
the regime from within.”
The policy
briefing was organized by the Iranian American communities of Texas in
Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and El Paso, and Iranian-American
Cultural Association of Missouri, both members of the Organization of
Iranian-American Communities (OIAC), the largest, most active and
enduring grass root organization of Iranian-Americans in the United
States.