Wendy Sherman: “what I would also hope is that the government in Iran would give us just verdicts. Now, there cannot be justice for the…”

“what I would also hope is that the government in Iran would give us just verdicts. Now, there cannot be justice for the 13 Jews who have been subjected to show trials over the last several months. They were arrested in March of 1999. Most of them have been in prison since then, all on the ridiculous charge of spying for the United States. In Iran, no Jew is allowed near anything of military significance, so to think that the CIA would turn to this small minority to hire our spies would be to allege a level of negligence to the CIA that not even the Chinese ambassador to Yugoslavia has asserted. Ronald Reagan instituted a ban on the importation of agricultural products from Iran. This amendment, or pair of amendments, would restore that ban. We could then, in the months to come, evaluate the behavior of the Iranian government. And if, later on, the conference committee decided that these provisions were unnecessary, if there was justice for the 13 Jews being tried in southern Iran, we could modify our behavior as the Iranian government modifies its behavior. For now, all we see in southern Iran is injustice and religious persecution. And the correct response of this House at this time is to prohibit the U.S. tax dollars that we control from being used to facilitate the importation of these products to the United States to compete with the products of American agriculture, when, instead, we should send the message to Teheran: no justice, no caviar.”