of thousands of political prisoners by hanging and firing squad for refusing to renounce their political affiliations and in some cases for possessing political reading material, including prisoners of conscience, teenagers, and pregnant women. In an audiotape, the late Hussein Ali Montazeri, a grand ayatollah who served as former Supreme leader Khomeini’s chief deputy, said that the 1988 mass killings were the greatest crime committed during the Islamic Republic, for which history will condemn us . (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) Sense of Congress It is the sense of the Congress that the United States should— (1) deny the Government of Iran the ability to continue to oppress the people of Iran and to use violence and executions to silence pro-democracy protestors