US Congress Planning More Bills To Support Iran Protests
Members of the US Congress are ramping up efforts to pass new legislation in support of Iranian protesters and sanctions on top officials for rights violations.
Members of the US Congress are ramping up efforts to pass new legislation in support of Iranian protesters and sanctions on top officials for rights violations.
A bipartisan group of Senate Foreign Relations Committee members and others numbering at least 28 Senators are re-introducing legislation in support of protests in Iran.
In a statement issued January 26, US Senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and James Lankford (R-Okla.) announced that the resolution will call on the international community “to continue publicly highlight and condemn the Iranian regime’s crackdown since protests began…”
The resolution also urges the Biden administration “to strengthen international efforts to impose additional sanctions on officials and entities responsible for the violent suppression of demonstrations.”
In more than four months of popular protests, Iranian security forces have killed around 500 people, wounded hundreds and arrested up to 20,000 others. The government also executed four detained protesters in December and many more either face the death penalty or charges that could end in death sentences.
On the same day that Senators issued their statement the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a resolution expressing solidarity with Iranian protesters.
The 420-1 rare bipartisan vote marked the latest round of international condemnations against Iran’s government, which has deepened its isolation.
“It is vital that we in the US House of Representatives, a body that is among the greatest symbols of freedom and democracy around the world, stand with one voice to affirm our support for the brave Iranian people,” Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-NY, said during floor debate Wednesday.
The Washington Beacon also reported Friday that according to its sources House Republicans and Democrats are joining forces to sanction Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who is the commander in chief of the armed forces, and other top regime officials for human rights crimes.
The legislation is dubbed the Mahsa Amini Act after the 22-year-old woman who was fatally wounded in hijab police custody in September and died in hospital. Her death triggered the anti-regime uprising by young people and women.
The Biden administration has imposed a series of sanctions on regime officials and entities since September, but sanctioning Khamenei directly for gross human rights violations will be a strong gesture for the international community and most Iranian who see him as the ultimate decider in the country.
It will also make more negotiation to revive the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) more difficult, as Tehran will likely demand these sanctions to be removed before it agrees to curb its nuclear program.
Indirect talks that the Biden administration initiated in April 2021 have failed to revive the Obama-era agreement and some experts believe a new deal must be negotiated.
Republicans oppose resuming any negotiations with the Islamic Republic amid its killing of protesters and provocative moves, including supplying kamikaze drones to Russia for its war in Ukraine.
The Mahsa Amini Act was introduced in the previous Congress, but Democrats did not support the measure. Now, with Republicans in majority, the Washington Beacon says, “Democratic foreign policy leaders are lending their support to the bill.”
According to videos published on social media, the regime’s security forces also used teargas to disperse the residents of Zahedan who were chanting antigovernment slogans after they left the Makki Mosque, where they attended the Friday prayers led by the outspoken Sunni cleric Mowlavi Abdolhamid.
People in other cities of Baluch and Sunni majority Sistan-Baluchestan province, such as Rask and Khash also poured onto the streets to renew their opposition to the Islamic Republic. Similar rallies by Iranian Sunni Muslims in the city of Galikash, in the northern Golestan province, were also held outside the home of the city’s Sunni cleric Mowlvi Mohammad Hossein Gorgij, the deposed Friday Imam of Azadshahr. Meanwhile, in the southwestern city of Izeh, in Khuzestan province, a memorial ceremony was held for Hossein Saeedi, a protester who was killed in the city 40 days ago.
Gorgij, who was also summoned to the special court for clergy after his dismissal, appeared among the protesters and criticized the policies of the regime as incorrect, saying that “it has been 45 years that the Islamic Republic is chanting ‘death to America,’ that resulted in the fall of its currency to 450,000 (against the US dollar).
His dismissal has led to public outrage and protests. The Shiite clerical authorities made the move as a reaction to some of his remarks that were deemed insulting to Shia sanctities. Gorgij, however, issued a statement afterwards to apologize, clarifying that his speech was misinterpreted, and he meant no disrespect towards the Shias.
In the videos posted on social media Friday, people are heard chanting slogans against the regime, including its ruler Ali Khamenei who was referred to as “the dictator” as well as the Basij militia of the Revolutionary Guard, who are seen as responsible for than 500 civilian deaths in the past four months.
During his Friday prayer sermons, Mowlavi Abdolhamid, the most influential Sunni cleric in Iran, talked about widespread poverty across the country and emphasized that people supported the 1979 revolution in Iran for the same reasons they protest today. He also called for the abolition of the death penalty in the country. Most of the people executed in Iran are from the Baluch minority along with the Kurds. "Today, people are crying for the justice they wanted in the 1979 revolution; They want freedom, and they are stuck in poverty, hardship and problems."
He described the empathy and unity of Iranians inside and outside the country as exemplary, saying that the people of Iran regard freedom of speech and assembly as their rights and want to be able to choose capable managers to run the country.
"Our nation is not in favor of executions. This people are the owners of their country, and they want the authorities to exercise caution in issuing death sentences and executing people,” he added.
In the 133 days since the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, in addition to 500 people killed in antigovernment protests, about 20,000 people have been arrested and hundreds wounded seriously. Many young people have lost one or both eyes because security forces fired pellets at their faces.
The regime has so far executed four people and dozens are sentenced for ‘moharebeh’ -- meaning “fighting God'' in the lexicon of the Iranian regime -- and ‘corruption on earth’ that carry the death penalty.
The film festival is part of a series of events to mark the 44th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution marked by 10 days of state-sponsored ceremonies dubbed the decade of Fajr – which literally means dawn.
The trio of festivals – along with a theater and a music festival – have faced boycotts by numerous artists and art enthusiasts in recent years, but the current wave of protests and the regime’s heavy-handed crackdown seems like the coup de grâce to the most significant propaganda gala of the Islamic Republic.
Despite the government’s efforts to portray the events as popular as they used to be a decade ago, the theater festival was inaugurated in the sparsely attended Vahdat Hall this week.
It is ironic that even the most “prestigious” cultural events of the Islamic Republic are held in halls constructed prior to 1979 in the era of monarchy, as the clerical regime never truly invested in culture, and considers most of its representations un-Islamic except for a couple of weeks during the celebrations for the establishment of the Islamic Republic.
Even though photos of the empty hall during the theater festival’s opening ceremony were reported even by state media and outlets affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Mehdi Esmaili, the Culture and Islamic Guidance minister, said that the event was welcomed by the people.
Since the beginning of the ongoing uprising in mid-September, many celebrities were banned, arrested or summoned by the judiciary for their solidarity with the current movement. Some of the most popular actors and artists even emigrated from the country to be able to express their support for the antigovernment protests freely and without fear of arrest.
Many actors and filmmakers had announced their boycott of the festival weeks before the start of the event, prompting the authorities not to announce the films selected to be screened during. Something unprecedented that took place this year was that the tickets for the movies were sold without the names of the works, because the government feared that if it announced the flicks, more artists would announce their opposition to the event. Of course, their trick turned out to be ineffective as some actors actually announced their boycott after their films were selected for screening, such as Haniyeh Tavassoli. Most of the actors, actresses and even directors do not have a say in the screening their movies because almost all of the productions in Iran are sponsored by state organizations.
The festival had always been dominated by the works produced by government organizations and propaganda institutes but this year the level of audacity of the regime is even higher as authorities have announced that no movies that draw a grim portrait of the society were selected for screening. The committee tasked with selecting the movies is comprised of regime insiders, some of whom were not even film industry figures, such as Reza Pourhossein, a cultural manager and a professor of psychology at the University of Tehran.
The secretaries of the festivals and their juries are also selected from the figures close to the regime and known for works that promote regime propaganda, such as the secretary of the film festival Mojtaba Amini, a producer who was involved in the attacks on the Saudi embassy when it was ransacked by IRGC’s basij militias in January 2016. The secretary of the Theater festival called those who boycott the event “cultural dictators” at the opening ceremony.
The antigovernment protests, coupled with economic woes and political uncertainty, have clouded the cultural landscape of the country so much that the culture minister was reported asking theater directors and singers to start holding performances so that the regime can pretend the situation is back to normal.
