U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, spoke on the Senate floor condemning Iran’s human rights abuses, praising the heroism of the Iranian people, and calling on the Biden Administration to walk away from nuclear talks and to secure internet access for Iranian protesters. 

"Protests have erupted now in more than 80 cities and in all 31 of Iran's provinces. This is not a minor demonstration. The mullahs are facing one of the most significant challenges to their rules since they seized it 43 years ago in 1979...

How has the regime responded? As expected, with more brutality, more repression and more savagery. Human rights groups estimate that 76 people have been killed so far by the authorities. And meanwhile, the crackdown has also included a shutting off of social media and the internet. They hope that a country in a world that can't see their thuggery won't notice it, will pretend it doesn't exist, won't know...

They know, and we know, the Iranians know how this regime operates. We know that these pathetic cowards have no regard for human dignity. Who are they? These bloodthirsty men are the goons who hang homosexuals from gallows, who protect child rapists, who deny women education. The regime is rotten to the core. The people suffering under it know, and we know, these men have told the world exactly who they are again and again and again."

"We cannot stand on the side of Iranian protesters, at the same time that we are trying to re-sign a nuclear deal with the same mullahs that would release billions of dollars back into their hands, help them shore up their power, and do nothing to prevent putting a catastrophic weapon into their genocidal hands. President Obama chased a flawed nuclear deal with Iran's terror state instead of more aggressively standing with the Iranian people. Today, the same hodgepodge of national security advisors is at it again. 

"We can start by helping illuminate the government-imposed blackout so that Iranians can see what their government and its black shirts are doing. More light, more information. We can expand and intensify the sanctions regime that has pushed Iran to the brink in the past before we lost our nerve. We can amplify the voices of the Iranian protesters and stop providing platforms to the regime's propagandists, we can make sure that the voices of the Iranian people are heard by keeping the internet on while Tehran works to put the country back into the black box of despotism."

Full transcript available below.  

Mr. President, 

The human spirit abhors tyranny. 

Since February, the world has witnessed examples of extraordinary courage in Ukraine. We've watched ordinary men and women mount defense of their homes and their homeland against overwhelming odds. People who'd never handled firearms before getting training, getting arms, getting munitions and joining together in the cause of defending their homes and their homelands. We know what it has cost them. And across the border, we've seen thousands and thousands of ordinary Russians challenge the suicidal thuggery of Vladimir Putin. We know what it has cost them too. 

Today, I want to call our attention to the courage on display in a different part of the world. I want to look to Iran. Two weeks ago, yesterday on September 13, Iran’s so called morality police arrested a young woman named Mahsa Amini. They detained her on the grounds that she was wearing her hijab improperly. She was bundled into a van where eyewitnesses could hear the police beating her. A few hours later, she was delivered to a local hospital where she was declared brain dead.

The police shamelessly claimed that she'd had a spontaneous heart attack. Thousands upon thousands of Iranians have poured into the streets in the 15 days since. Protesters are calling for an end to the savagery that has made absurd arrests and vicious beatings a regular part of the rhythm of life in Tehran. They're demanding dignity for millions and millions of people that have lost it under Tehran's maniac theocracy. This is no small thing that they've done, the courage that is on display as they pour into the streets. 

Protests have erupted now in more than 80 cities and in all 31 of Iran's provinces. This is not a minor demonstration. The mullahs are facing one of the most significant challenges to their rules since they seized it 43 years ago in 1979. How has the regime responded? As expected, with more brutality, more repression and more savagery. Human rights groups estimate that 76 people have been killed so far by the authorities. And meanwhile, the crackdown has also included a shutting off of social media and the internet. They hope that a country in a world that can't see their thuggery won't notice it, will pretend it doesn't exist, won't know.

They know, and we know, the Iranians know how this regime operates. We know that these pathetic cowards have no regard for human dignity. Who are they? These bloodthirsty men are the goons who hang homosexuals from gallows, who protect child rapists, who deny women education. The regime is rotten to the core. The people suffering under it know, and we know, these men have told the world exactly who they are again and again and again.

In 2009 Iranians erupted at the grotesque human rights abuses perpetrated by then President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and in an election riddled with fraud, the world saw who he was again. During the Green Revolution, Thousands of protesters, including key opposition leaders, were arrested and thrown in Iran’s dungeon prisons. Many were tortured, several dozen were killed, and a 26 year-old woman, a student, was shot from a nearby rooftop by pro-government militia men. Her dying moments were recorded by cell phone video and broadcast around the world. We know who they are. 

Ten years later, three years ago in 2019, massive nationwide protests erupted again, this time following an announcement of massive, unsustainable hikes on gas prices. The protests and the violence that followed were the worst since 1979. Hundreds of people took to the streets and the government responded with a campaign of systemic savagery, hoping to drive people back into their homes to hide the truth, to not admit who this regime is and the ways that they fail. Protesters were shot from rooftops and by helicopter by the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Their troops open fired on unarmed protesters attempting to block roadways and entrances. In one southwestern city, IRGC forces pursued several dozen mostly young unarmed protesters into a march outside the city and then began massacring them. Most reliable outside observers believed that about 1500 protesters were killed.

In 2019, Tehran also conducted a near total internet shutdown plunging the country's 83 million people into information darkness for about six days. That practice, as we're seeing again right now, as we see this month has become one more regular instrument of terror. These guys are scared of sunlight. They're scared of information. They're scared of the truth. We know that the despots in Iran that brutalize their own people also export their terror tactics. Look at the last two months alone. In July last summer of 2021, a group of Iranian spies tried to kidnap Masih Alinejad, an Iranian American journalist and Human Rights activists at her home in New York. In July of this year, she was the target of an assassination attempt again at her home in our country.

We learned in August that a member of the IRGC had plotted to assassinate former National Security Adviser, John Bolton, on American soil. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Iran envoy Brian Hook still require personal security details everywhere they go because Tehran has put targets on their back in our country. 

It was also just last month that inspired by the Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 fatwa, an American man attacked and nearly killed novelist Salman Rushdie during an appearance in New York. And in August, Vladimir Putin received his first shipment of Iranian drones, birds of a feather.  

Inside its borders and beyond them, the regime in Tehran thinks nothing but bloody thoughts. They think no one has dignity that doesn't subscribe exactly to their theocratic views. It is long past time that American policy and the policy of our friends and allies recognizes these blunt facts. We should tell the truth. 

In 2009 and again in 2019, we had the opportunity to support and encourage protesters agitating against a regime that is their enemy, and is ours. And in both cases, under administrations Democratic and Republican, we failed the test.

Last week, President Biden told the UN General Assembly, "Today we stand with the brave citizens and the brave women of Iran, who right now are demonstrating to secure their basic rights."

It's a good start. But it's far from sufficient. It's far from the end. 

Right now, America's policy toward Iran is hopelessly schizophrenic. 

We cannot stand on the side of Iranian protesters, at the same time that we are trying to re-sign a nuclear deal with the same mullahs that would release billions of dollars back into their hands, help them shore up their power, and do nothing to prevent putting a catastrophic weapon into their genocidal hands. President Obama chased a flawed nuclear deal with Iran's terror state instead of more aggressively standing with the Iranian people. Today, the same hodgepodge of national security advisors is at it again.  

Newly announced sanctions against the leaders of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, the Army's ground forces, and the pro government militias - these sanctions are good. But we cannot stand on the side of the men and women of Iran in the streets at the same time, we refuse to sanction the leaders who matter most -- Ayatollah Khomeini and the circle of elites around him, they continue to escape serious consequence. We shouldn't trick ourselves. We should not delude ourselves into thinking that economic sanctions are a magic wand, or that the mullahs themselves care very much about the economic pain that the people suffering under their regime are suffering. We should not think that the mullahs care about elite opinion in Paris. We have to have a serious top to bottom evaluation of our Iran strategy. And a coherent policy must begin by telling the truth over and over and over again.

We cannot stand on the side of the people in the streets demanding dignity at the same time that we welcome Iran's President, someone personally responsible for show trials and mass executions and assassination attempts on our soil in our country. We can't allow him to spout lies and propaganda on our same American soil as we did last week at the UN General Assembly in New York.

Now is the time for a serious coordinated policy that admits the threat that Iran poses, not just to its people and its neighbors but also to America, and that takes seriously our commitment to the rights and freedoms of all 7.8 billion people across this globe created in God's image.  

We can start by helping illuminate the government-imposed blackout so that Iranians can see what their government and its black shirts are doing. More light, more information. We can expand and intensify the sanctions regime that has pushed Iran to the brink in the past before we lost our nerve. We can amplify the voices of the Iranian protesters and stop providing platforms to the regime's propagandists, we can make sure that the voices of the Iranian people are heard by keeping the internet on while Tehran works to put the country back into the black box of despotism. 

The courage of men and women on the streets of Iran today has not gone unnoticed. They have imagined the possibility of an Iranian future no longer under the thumb of Tehran's bloodthirsty dictators. We should be able to imagine that future too, and to do more to make that a reality. The Iranian people hate Tehran's blood-soaked tyrants. This is not a regime that has the consent of the governed. The American people are on freedom side, the administration should drop the fantasy of another nuclear deal, walk away from the table, and turn the screws on these monsters by first telling the truth again and again. We want to do everything we can to celebrate the heroism of the Iranians in the streets and to expose Tehran's human rights abuses around the watching world. 

And the best way to do that is by making sure that the Internet stays on in Iran.

More light, more truth, more information. 

Thank you, Mr. President.