On the recordMarch 21, 2016
These faces are not household names, faces; no one knows who these unknown Americans are. And that is because they have been held in Iran for so long. September 18, 2015, and also detained in 2015. Of course they were not detained the 444 days that Iran, a totalitarian dictatorship and theocracy, held 52 American diplomats, and the world is not watching the same as they did then. That is how this President could make a deal with Iran and not include these victims of this dictatorship. So today, Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor to remind people that in the years, the decades, since I was a young lieutenant in 1979, when the Ayatollah Khomeini blamed students for somehow doing something--not his government--and continued to blame them and blames them in many ways until today, the Iranian Government, today, would still hold our Embassy hostage. It still is a shell waiting for a return, a return that I fear this President wants to do by executive order. He has already thrown aside so much of what was working to stop this regime from spreading terrorism. Mr. Speaker, as we speak today, these people are held hostage, and the American people are being held hostage by a President who chooses to use the pen and the phone over the democratic means at his side. Mr.…
