; Whereas, on November 15, 2019, popular protests against the Iranian regime began and rapidly spread to at least 100 cities throughout the country, and reports indicate that Iranian security forces used lethal force and about 1,500 people were killed during less than 2 weeks of unrest, and thousands more were detained during these protests; Whereas, beginning in September 2022, antigovernment protests ignited in response to the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who was arrested by the morality police that enforces Iran’s mandatory dress code laws; Whereas, in several months of continuing protests in hundreds of cities throughout Iran, the regime’s security forces have killed hundreds and arrested tens of thousands of protesters; Whereas, according to a December 9, 2022, Amnesty International report, Iran’s security forces have killed with absolute impunity more than 40 children and injured many more in a bid to crush the spirit of resistance among the country’s youth and retain their iron grip on power at any cost ; Whereas these protests are rooted in the more than four decades of organized resistance against the Iranian dictatorship, which have been led by women who have endured torture, sexual and gender-based violence, and death; Whereas the Iranian people have been deprived of their fundamental freedoms for which reason they are rejecting monarchic dictatorship and religious tyranny, as evident in their protest slogans; Whereas, on November 24, 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Council established a fact-finding commission to conduct an independent investigation into the ongoing deadly violence related to the protests in Iran; Whereas the Iranian regime has arbitrarily and brutally suppressed ethnic and religious minorities, including Iranian Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs, Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Zoroastrians, and even Sunni Muslims, and deprived them of their basic human rights, and has in many cases executed them