Mahsa Amini Human Rights and Security Accountability Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BANKS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding, and I thank him for his leadership on this issue and so many other issues related to our foreign policy and national security.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to speak today in support of the passage of my bill, the MAHSA Act. As the chairman said, this bill is named in honor of Mahsa Amini, a young woman in Iran who was killed by the Iranian regime nearly almost exactly 1 year ago this week.

Mahsa died after being snatched off the street and brutally beaten by a patrol of the regime's so-called morality police all because she was not wearing her headscarf correctly in public.

Mahsa's murder triggered months of the largest prodemocracy and anti- regime protests in Iran since the 1979 revolution. Iranians called for freedom and chanted ``death to the dictator.'' Iranian women cast off their hijabs and burnt them in protest. They shook the regime to its core and showed the world that the Iranian people despise the Iranian regime. They will no longer tolerate its human rights abuses, corruption, and squandering of their wealth on terrorism.

Nevertheless, the Biden administration refused to take real action in support of the protesters last year and has been looking the other way ever since.

This administration is too afraid to jeopardize their dream of a new nuclear deal with Iran, so it is up to Congress to act instead. That is what we are doing here today.

The MAHSA Act will hold the most malicious elements of Iran's regime accountable while avoiding collateral damage on ordinary Iranians. My bill will require the administration to actually enforce sanctions on the books and to go after Mahsa's killers and funders of terrorism, including the Supreme Leader of Iran and senior regime officials and their money laundering organizations.

I thank all of those from both parties who made this bipartisan legislation possible and to become a reality today. More importantly, I thank all those Iranian-American groups here at home who showed their Representatives how important it is to stand in support of the Iranian people and to finally take action to hold this brutal regime accountable.

I call upon the Senate to immediately take up and pass the MAHSA Act, and I call upon President Biden to stop dragging his feet, listen to the Iranian people, and confront the Iranian regime once and for all.

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