On the recordFebruary 11, 2010
I was with Senator McCain. It was such a baldfaced lie because we see Mr. Motaki get up and say Iran is the most democratic regime in the entire Middle East region and beyond and says, with regard to our complaints and the Europeans' complaints about the suppression of the rights of the Iranian people, the execution of political demonstrators, the jailing of thousands of peaceful political protesters, that is the law and if they violated the criminal law, they would be punished for it. When somebody is so detached from the truth as we know it from what we see with our own eyes, it is hard to trust them otherwise. I wish to add a word. If we adopt this proposal, as I believe we can and will when the general Iranian sanctions bill comes back from conference, we will have taken a significant first step in the direction of penalties on the Iranian regime for human rights abuses of its own people. I want to use this, and I ask my friend if he agrees that the impact of this legislation would be magnified many times over if our allied governments around the world, particularly in Europe, which has a tradition of support for human rights, also joined us in adopting laws that impose targeted sanctions against human rights abusers in Iran? It does not require previous U.N. Security Council action. There is nothing stopping our Congress or the EU from imposing targeted human rights sanctions as quickly as possible.
