"The United States must also work with the international community to hold the Iranian regime accountable for human rights abuses."
"The recently announced Iran Human Rights and Democracy Promotion Act addresses the issues above."
"I wanted to just highlight, for the record, a letter dated April 20, that Senator Menendez and Senator Cardin and I sent to the State Department."
"It is our duty to bear witness to the truth of the plight of the Iranian opposition."
"President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and other senior members of the administration are constantly speaking out about these abuses."
"And you obviously think some of them are persuadable, to use a word in our lexicon. Yes?"
"And even some--a good number who may have been supporters of Ahmadinejad in the past?"
"we've had the--we very much welcome the administration's engagement recently with the Human Rights Council and the assignment of the Special Rapporteur."
"We urge the Iranian Government to promptly release Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal so that they may return to their families."
"It is a significant achievement that this action was taken."
"I want to move to sanctions."
"Human rights sanctions are a useful and effective way of targeting abusers and communicating international concerns to the Iranian people."
"Members of the U.S. Congress, such as Senators Casey and Kirk to give two examples, have already started to 'adopt' Iranian political prisoners."
"government alone, and governments alone, cannot solve this problem or provide the kind of help that we need."
"We have over 428,000 fans, just on Facebook where they leave comments proactively and communicate with us."
"I know that the Congress has more work to do, and the administration has more work to do."
"even though we didn't see people on the streets, month after month, and we didn't have a lot of coverage of it, that I've always believed that, once something stirs in someone's heart and they want to..."
"the potential to expose that, I think, is very important."
