Condemning the Iranian regime's terrorism, regional proxy war, internal suppression, and for other purposes.

Bill: 118-hres-1148
Sponsor: full_name: Rep. Weber, Randy K. [R-TX-14]
Introduced: 2024-04-15
Policy area: International Affairs
Latest action: action_date: 2024-04-15
text: Referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Summaries:

tv_txt: IV 118th CONGRESS 2d Session H. RES. 1148 IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES April 15, 2024 Mr. Weber of Texas (for himself, Ms. Adams , Mr. Allen , Mr. Amodei , Mr. Babin , Mr. Bacon , Mr. Baird , Mr. Balderson , Mr. Banks , Mr. Bean of Florida , Mr. Bera , Mr. Bergman , Mr. Bilirakis , Mr. Bishop of Georgia , Mr. Bost , Mr. Bucshon , Mr. Burchett , Mr. Burgess , Mr. Calvert , Mrs. Cammack , Mr. Cárdenas , Mr. Carter of Georgia , Mr. Carter of Louisiana , Mrs. Chavez-DeRemer , Mr. Ciscomani , Ms. Clarke of New York , Mr. Cline , Mr. Clyde , Mr. Cohen , Mr. Costa , Ms. Craig , Mr. Crenshaw , Mr. Davis of Illinois , Ms. De La Cruz , Mr. DesJarlais , Mr. D'Esposito , Mr. Duarte , Mr. Duncan , Mr. Dunn of Florida , Mr. Edwards , Mr. Ellzey , Mr. Ezell , Mr. Fallon , Mr. Feenstra , Mr. Ferguson , Mr. Finstad , Mr. Fitzpatrick , Mr. Fleischmann , Mr. Flood , Mr. Scott Franklin of Florida , Mr. Fulcher , Mr. Gallego , Mr. Mike Garcia of California , Mr. Gimenez , Mr. Tony Gonzales of Texas , Mr. Vicente Gonzalez of Texas , Mrs. González-Colón , Mr. Gooden of Texas , Mr. Gosar , Mr. Gottheimer , Ms. Granger , Mr. Green of Tennessee , Mr. Grothman , Mr. Guest , Mr. Harris , Mr. Higgins of Louisiana , Mrs. Hinson , Mr. Hunt , Mr. Issa , Mr. Jackson of Texas , Ms. Jackson Lee , Mr. Joyce of Pennsylvania , Mr. Kelly of Mississippi , Mrs. Kiggans of Virginia , Mr. LaLota , Mr. LaMalfa , Mr. Lamborn , Mr. Langworthy , Mr. Lawler , Mrs. Lesko , Ms. Lofgren , Mr. Loudermilk , Mr. Luetkemeyer , Mr. Luttrell , Ms. Mace , Ms. Malliotakis , Mr. Mast , Mrs. McBath , Mrs. McClain , Mr. McClintock , Mr. McCormick , Mr. Meuser , Mrs. Miller of West Virginia , Mrs. Miller of Illinois , Mr. Miller of Ohio , Mrs. Miller-Meeks , Mr. Molinaro , Mr. Moolenaar , Mr. Mooney , Mr. Moore of Alabama , Mr. Moylan , Mr. Nehls , Mr. Newhouse , Mr. Nunn of Iowa , Mr. Ogles , Mr. Owens , Mr. Palmer , Mr. Panetta , Mr. Pappas , Mr. Payne , Ms. Ross , Mr. Ruiz , Mr. Rutherford , Mr. Austin Scott of Georgia , Mr. Self , Mr. Sessions , Mr. Sherman , Mr. Smith of Nebraska , Ms. Spanberger , Mrs. Spartz , Mr. Stauber , Ms. Stefanik , Mr. Steube , Mr. Thompson of Pennsylvania , Mr. Tiffany , Mr. Timmons , Mr. Turner , Mr. Valadao , Mr. Van Drew , Ms. Van Duyne , Mr. Van Orden , Mr. Vargas , Mr. Veasey , Mr. Walberg , Mr. Webster of Florida , Mr. Westerman , Ms. Wexton , Mr. Williams of New York , Mr. Williams of Texas , Mr. Wilson of South Carolina , Mr. Garamendi , Mr. Pfluger , and Mr. Johnson of South Dakota ) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs RESOLUTION Condemning the Iranian regime’s terrorism, regional proxy war, internal suppression, and for other purposes.

Whereas the United States acknowledges the critical importance of addressing regional chaos in the Middle East, which has been significantly heightened since the October 7, 2023, attacks; Whereas grave concerns persist regarding Iran’s complicity in promoting Islamic fundamentalism and providing support for terrorism and its proxy groups in the region; Whereas Iranian regime officials have expressed full support for their proxy groups’ current war and crisis in the region; Whereas Iranian regime officials talk about the existence of a joint operation room with their proxy groups at the highest levels, operating amid the Middle East turmoil; Whereas ignoring Tehran’s direct involvement in the conflict and its ensuing crisis encourages Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to further fuel the conflict; Whereas Western nations bear a responsibility to hold the Iranian regime accountable for its actions that incite violence, terror, and instability; Whereas the Iranian regime has been deeply implicated in furnishing support, both financial and military, to proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, and elsewhere in the region, as well as on a global scale; Whereas the Iranian regime has increasingly acted, since October 2023, as the head of the snake of terrorism and war in the region, from supporting proxies that vehemently oppose peace in the Middle East to threatening ships and free trade in the Red Sea, and from targeting American forces in the region to providing missiles and drones to rogue actors; Whereas the Iranian regime has stepped up hostage diplomacy as a primary tool of its foreign policy, using it against Western nations to release its criminals and terrorists; Whereas Asadullah Assadi, a senior Iranian diplomat based in the Iranian Embassy in Vienna, Austria, was arrested in July 2018 and in February 2021, convicted in Belgium and sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment in connection with the planned terror plot against Free Iran 2018—The Alternative gathering in Paris, France; Whereas the Iranian regime’s survival depends heavily on its internal suppression and terror campaign abroad, using its terror proxies; Whereas significant protests in Iran in the years 2018, 2019, and 2022 have echoed the demand for the rejection of the Velayat-e Faqih (guardianship of Islamic jurist) to safeguard the sovereignty of the people in a republic founded on universal suffrage and pluralism; Whereas, commencing in September 2022, widespread antigovernment protests were triggered by the untimely demise of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman who was detained by the morality police who are tasked with enforcing Iran’s mandatory dress code regulations; Whereas the leadership of the 2022 protests in Iran has been predominantly assumed by women and youth who ardently advocate for social freedoms and political transformation; Whereas, during several months of persistent protests in countless cities across Iran, the security forces of the regime caused the loss of life of hundreds and detained tens of thousands of demonstrators, and among the arrested, several individuals were executed starting in December 2022, and continuing to date, while dozens more face the specter of execution under charges of moharebeh (waging war on God); Whereas the uniformity in slogans and strategies employed by protesters nationwide underscores the overarching aspirations of the Iranian people for freedom and emphasizes the organized nature of these protests; Whereas the Iranian regime has arbitrarily and brutally suppressed ethnic and religious minorities, encompassing Iranian Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs, Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Zoroastrians, and even Sunni Muslims, and has deprived them of their fundamental human rights, often culminating in executions; Whereas the Iranian people have been deprived of their fundamental freedoms, for which reason they are rejecting monarchic dictatorship and religious tyranny, as evident in their protest slogans; Whereas the Iranian populace has voiced its desire for change by taking over from the IRGC and Supreme Leader’s centers of power; Whereas, according to senior Iranian regime officials, the activities of the Resistance Units against the IRGC and the Basij forces have played a leading role in nationwide Iran protests, particularly since 2022, and the regime has reportedly killed and detained thousands of them, yet Tehran remains increasingly paranoid about their activities; Whereas, in 2023, the Iranian regime started sham trials in absentia of some 104 veteran members of the Iranian Resistance, who are primarily based in Europe, including in France and Albania, to create a phony legal precedent against them and have them extradited to Iran or justify terror plots against them; Whereas over 3,600 parliamentarians around the world and 125 former world leaders expressed support for the Ten-Point Plan for the Future of Iran of Mrs. Maryam Rajavi that calls for the universal right to vote, free elections, a market economy, and separation of religion and state, and advocates gender, religious, and ethnic equality, a foreign policy based on peaceful coexistence, peace in the Middle East, and a nonnuclear Republic of Iran; Whereas it is incumbent upon the Iranian people to determine their destiny, based on their vote, as the sole criteria for political legitimacy; Whereas the executions of as many as 30,000 political prisoners during the 1988 massacre were carried out under the fatwa by then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini to speedily kill all political prisoners who remained loyal to the main movement in the Iranian Resistance, i.e., the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK/PMOI), with subsequent death commissions established on July 19, 1988, counting among their members the current Iranian regime’s President, Ebrahim Raisi, with the express purpose of carrying out the fatwa; Whereas the IRGC has, for over four decades, played a crucial role in internal suppression, terrorism, and regional proxy wars and has garnered designation as a terrorist entity by several nations, including the United States; Whereas the right to self-determination constitutes an inherent and inalienable right of all peoples, including the Iranian populace, forming a cornerstone of international law and duly enshrined in numerous international instruments, including the Charter of the United Nations (1945), which underscores the principles of self-determination; Whereas, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law ; Whereas the Declaration of Independence of the United States emphasizes, whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government , and that when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security ; Whereas the President of the Iranian regime, Ebrahim Raisi, who has been personally implicated in torture and execution since the inception of the regime, played a prominent role in the 1988 massacre and the suppression of the demonstrations of 2019 and 2022; Whereas over 900 women and men of Camp Ashraf 3 are former political prisoners who witnessed prison crimes of the Iranian regime, and many of them are witnesses of the 1988 massacre and other political killings in Iran, among them eyewitnesses of crimes committed by Ebrahim Raisi, who must be fully protected for potential testimonies before any international courts investigating the killings in Iran; Whereas, in November 2021, the Swedish judiciary moved the whole court in Stockholm to Albania for two weeks to facilitate hearing testimonies of 7 former Iranian political prisoners now residing in Camp Ashraf 3, who were considered vital witnesses for a trial related to the 1988 massacre; Whereas that Swedish court, in December 2023, upheld the earlier ruling of a life sentence for Hamid Nouri, implicated in the 1988 massacre where he was one of the perpetrators in one of Tehran’s prisons; and Whereas, in an April 19, 2016, letter to a European Parliament Vice President, the Prime Minister of Albania wrote, Albania is fully engaged and committed to ensure for the Iranian refugees all rights stipulated in the Geneva Convention 1951, in the European Human Rights Convention and in the whole international legislation : Now, therefore, be it

That the House of Representatives— (1) unequivocally condemns the Iranian regime’s actions in the Middle East leading to and since the October 7, 2023, attacks, which have contributed to terrorism and regional instability; (2) affirms that addressing the call of Iranian protesters for fundamental changes within Iran contributes to peaceful coexistence among neighboring nations and enhances regional and global security; (3) acknowledges and upholds the Iranian people’s inherent right to determine their political future, as articulated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights; (4) calls for holding the Iranian regime accountable for its actions through the continued imposition of sanctions and to support the Iranian Resistance’s Ten-Point Plan for the Future of Iran; (5) urges the free world, given that the people of Iran have been deprived of all their fundamental rights and political paths for change within the framework of international law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to recognize the rights of the Iranian people, the protesters, and the Resistance Units to confront the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and repressive forces to bring about change; (6) calls on the United States Government, in cooperation with our ally Albania, to ensure the full protection of the Iranian political refugees in Camp Ashraf 3 in Albania against the Iranian regime’s plots and pressure and for them to benefit from all rights stipulated in the Geneva Convention 1951 and the European Convention on Human Rights, including the right to life, liberty, and security, and protection of property, as well as freedom of expression and assembly; and (7) recognizes the rights of the Iranian people and their struggle to establish a democratic, secular, and nonnuclear Republic of Iran.