Ed Royce: “With all due respect to the arguments on moral equivalency with respect to Iran, the reality is that this is a…”

“With all due respect to the arguments on moral equivalency with respect to Iran, the reality is that this is a government that starts its morning prayers with: ``Death to America. Death to Israel.'' The Ayatollah makes it clear he means it. So, yes, we should try to remove the plank from our eye, but we should not remove our eyes from the fact that what we have in terms of policy being directed from the Ayatollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a policy that calls for the destruction of the United States of America. Now, Mr. Chairman, this bill has a powerful goal, and it is to expose the corrupt nature of the Iranian regime. But when we talk about why, the answer is because the personnel responsible for carrying out these assassinations, that have us concerned about carrying out terror are, in fact, the leadership in Iran of these organizations that we attempt to identify here. That is the job of doing terror research and cutting off terror finance. That is what we are supposed to be doing. This regime claims to be more than a government. It claims to be a revolution. They call themselves the Islamic Revolution. But when you look at it closely, as this bill requires the Treasury Department to do, the regime in Tehran resembles something else, a criminal enterprise, because, from the Supreme Leader to the Revolutionary Guard, these so-called servants of the Revolution control one-third of the Iranian economy because they seized it.…”