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Floor Speech

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Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, tens of thousands of Iranian citizens are taking to the streets in dozens of cities across Iran as we speak. The chant that is echoing across that ancient land is: ``Death to the dictator.'' Yet Joe Biden and the Democrats in Washington would rather make another disastrous deal with the ayatollahs and those who declare ``death to America'' and who are, at this very moment, working to assassinate American citizens on our sovereign soil. Barack Obama's betrayal of the Iranian people during the Green Revolution is replaying before our very eyes.

The latest revolt against the ayatollahs was inspired by yet another reprehensible crime by this theocratic dictatorial regime against its own people.

Last week, the ayatollahs' thugs, known as the morality police, arrested a 22-year-old woman on the street for the heinous crime of allegedly not wearing a head scarf in public. They threw her into a police van; they brutally beat her on the way to the detention center; they inflicted terrible injuries on her, from which she soon died.

Countless Iranians were immediately horrified by this cold-blooded murder and are now taking to the streets to protest their illegitimate outlaw regime. They are burning hijabs and protesting the oppression under which they have suffered every day for 43 years. In the murder of this young woman, we see the true face of the ayatollahs, a regime which our President hopes to enrich with hundreds of billions of dollars and to appease with yet another terrible nuclear deal. In fact, just minutes ago, President Biden stood before the world at the U.N. General Assembly, stating at great length that he would continue negotiations toward this dangerous deal while offering only the briefest and emptiest of words to reproach the ayatollahs for the murder of this young woman for the grave crime of refusing to wear a headscarf in public and only the briefest of words for the thousands of protesters--at latest reports, seven of which have been murdered and many more shot and beaten--I would say this does feel a lot like deja vu, a replay of Barack Obama's betrayal of the 2009 Green revolutionaries. And why did he betray them in 2009? Was he caught flatfooted? Was he overwhelmed by events? Was he simply new to the job? naive? even incompetent? No. He betrayed those Green revolutionaries in cold blood because his one overriding objective was his terrible nuclear deal with Iran.

He wanted a deal because he believed America was to blame for the decades of tension and conflicts with Iran; that America had sinned and we needed to atone for our sins against Iran and to pull in our horns; and therefore he stood idly by so as not to offend the mullahs and their street militias as they beat the Iranian people.

And, today, for the very same reason, Democrats are once again selling out those brave Iranian protesters so they can once again try to buy the friendship of the oppressive ayatollahs. The U.S. Congress should stand with the Iranian people and prevent another betrayal by a Democratic President. And you wouldn't think it would be that hard. I mean, on face value, you would think self-professed progressive Democrats would stand up as one against a so-called morality police who arrested a woman for the grave crime of not wearing a scarf over her hair in public and then beat her so severely that she died in custody.

Imagine what would happen if this had occurred in, say, Saudi Arabia. Imagine what these Democrats would be saying if a country in Western Europe enforced its laws in this way. You would expect that Democrats could marshal just a tiny bit of outrage--the tiniest bit of outrage possible when the ayatollahs arrest a woman for not wearing a headscarf in public and then beat her to death. But, no, they don't.

And to be honest, you don't even have to imagine these things either. We see how the Democrats have treated Iran for 13 years--as if America is at fault and we are the problem and Iran deserves an apology and hundreds of billions of dollars and to be brought into the civilized world. Look at how they treated Saudi Arabia as a pariah for years. In fact, look at Barack Obama's entire response to the Arab Spring in 2011. It was just like his response to the Green Revolution in 2009 in Iran. The Iranian people rise up in protest, silence; the people of Egypt rise up in protest, Barack Obama withdraws political support for Egypt's leader and demands his immediate resignation; protests in Libya where Muammar Qadhafi had been scared straight by George Bush and had come out of the cold, Barack Obama attacks his government and overthrows him militarily; protests in Syria, silence.

What is the common thread in those responses in 2009 in Iran and 2011 in Egypt and Libya and Syria and 2022 in Iran? It is very simple. If you are pro-American, you get condemned--maybe overthrown. If you are anti-American, you get rewarded with hundreds of billions of dollars and a blind eye toward your grave crimes against your people and your aggression against America and our allies throughout the region. Again and again, the Democrats excuse the crimes of our enemies while they obsess over the flaws of our friends.

As Jeane Kirkpatrick, the legendary Ambassador to the United Nations, once said--and it is true today of so many Democrats--``they always blame America first.''

We cannot allow Joe Biden to repeat the mistakes of Barack Obama and once again betray the brave people of Iran, which I would remind you is a mortal enemy of the United States.

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