1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Iran Human Rights and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act . 2. United States policy on human rights violations by the Government of Iran (a) Findings Congress finds the following: (1) Iran is a member of the United Nations, voted for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, among other international human rights treaties. (2) In violation of these and other international obligations, Iranian regime officials continue to violate the fundamental human rights of the Iranian people. (3) The Iranian regime persecutes ethnic and religious minority groups, such as the Baha’is, Christians, Sufi, Sunni, and dissenting Shi’a Muslims (such as imprisoned Ayatollah Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi), through harassment, arrests, and imprisonment, during which detainees have routinely been beaten, tortured, and killed. (4) Following voting irregularities that resulted in the 2009 election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian regime brutally suppressed peaceful political dissent from wide segments of civil society during the Green Revolution in a cynical attempt to retain its undemocratic grip on power. (5) Since February 2011 the leaders of Iran’s Green Movement, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, his wife Dr. Zahra Rahnavard, and former Speaker of the Majles (parliament) Mehdi Karroubi, have lived under strict house arrest, ordered by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. (6) In 1999 the Iranian regime brutally suppressed a student revolt that was one of the largest mass uprisings up until that point in the country since 1979. (7) Over a 4-month period in 1988, the Iranian regime carried out the barbaric mass executions of thousands of political prisoners. (8) Senior governmental, military, and public security officials in Iran have continued ordering, controlling, and committing egregious human rights violations that, in many cases, represent official policies of the Iranian regime. (b)