M-85 Iranian state-sponsored attacks

That:

(a) the House recognize that

(i) beginning in September 2022, antigovernment protests ignited in response to the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman who was arrested by the morality police that enforce Iran’s mandatory dress code laws,

(ii) these protests are rooted in the more than four decades of organized resistance against the Iranian dictatorship, which have been most recently led by women who have endured torture, sexual and gender-based violence, and death in several months of continuing protests in hundreds of cities throughout Iran,

(iii) the Iranian regime’s security forces have killed hundreds and arrested tens of thousands of protesters, of whom Mohsen Shekari and Majidreza Rahnavard, both 23 years old, were hung on December 8 and 12, 2022, in Tehran and Mashhad, and Mohammad Hosseini and Mohammad Mehdi Karami, were executed on 17 January 2023, while dozens more have been convicted of ‘‘Moharebeh’’, meaning waging war on God, and are at risk of execution,

(iv) according to a December 9, 2022, Amnesty International report, ‘‘Iran’s security forces have killed with absolute impunity more than 40 children and injured many more in a bid to crush the spirit of resistance among the country’s youth and retain their iron grip on power at any cost’’,

(v) on November 24, 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Council established a fact-finding mission to conduct an independent investigation into the ongoing deadly violence related to the protests in Iran that began on September 16, 2022,

(vi) on December 14, 2022, the United Nations Economic and Social Council adopted a resolution to expel Iran from the Commission on the Status of Women for the remainder of its four-year term ending in 2026,

(vii) the Iranian regime has arbitrarily and brutally suppressed ethnic and religious minorities, including Iranian Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs, Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Zoroastrians, and even Sunni Muslims, has deprived them of their basic human rights, and has in many cases executed them,

(viii) Amnesty International, in its report entitled “Blood-Soaked Secret” of December 2018, described the 1988 massacre of political prisoners following a fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini to execute those who remained steadfast in their support for the Iranian opposition, as “ongoing crimes against humanity,”

(ix) on June 30, 2018, tens of thousands of people gathered in Paris at the Free Iran gathering where they supported advocates for a democratic, secular, and nonnuclear Republic of Iran, and showed support for Mrs. Maryam Rajavi’s 10-point plan for the future of Iran, which calls for the universal right to vote, free elections, and a market economy, and advocates gender, religious, and ethnic equality, a foreign policy based on peaceful coexistence, and a nonnuclear Iran,

(x) on July 2, 2018, the Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office announced it had foiled a terrorist plot against the ‘‘Free Iran 2018–the Alternative’’ gathering held on June 30, 2018, in support of the Iranian people’s struggle for freedom,

(xi) a senior Iranian diplomat, Assadollah Assadi, who served as the third secretary of the Iranian embassy in Vienna, Austria, was arrested in Germany and on February 2021 convicted in Belgium and sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment in connection with the planned terror plot in Paris at the Free Iran gathering,

(xii) on December 15, 2022, the Special Court for Combatting Corruption and Organized Crime in Albania sentenced an Iranian national to 10 years in prison on terrorism-related charges, including attempts to engage in espionage against, and the assassination of Iranian dissidents in Albania; and

(b) in the opinion of the House, the government should

(i) condemn past and present Iranian state-sponsored terrorist attacks against Canada and the United States and its citizens and officials, as well as Iranian dissidents, including the Iranian regime’s terror plot against the ‘‘Free Iran 2018–the Alternative’’ gathering in Paris,

(ii) work with the United States and the European allies to stand with the people of Iran who are legitimately defending their rights for freedom against repression, and to condemn the brutal killing of Iranian protesters by the Iranian regime,

(iii) recognize the rights of the Iranian people and their struggle to establish a democratic, secular, and nonnuclear Republic of Iran.