On November 6, 2019, Organization of the Iranian American Communities (OIAC), held a congressional briefing in the U.S. Senate, to discuss the rise of domestic suppression and regional aggression by Tehran as anti-regime protests spread in Iran and intensify in Iraq and Lebanon. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), member of the Foreign Relations Committee and Senator John Boozman (R-AR), Chairman of Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies, addressed the event. Other speakers included Soona Samsami, Ambassador Robert Joseph, Ambassador Lincoln Bloomfield, Jr., Ambassador Marc Ginsberg, and Professor Ivan Sascha Sheehan.
Ms. Soona Samsami, US representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), emphasized how “the mullahs have stepped up repression and executions in Iran, and export of terrorism and warmongering in the region. Unfortunately, decades of silence and inaction vis-à-vis the regime’s aggressions had emboldened the mullahs.” She added the “moment has now arrived for the elected representatives of the American people to declare their unequivocal support for the Iranian people’s demand to overthrow the clerical regime and to hold its officials accountable for their crimes and terrorism.”
