[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 152 (Wednesday, September 21, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4937-S4939]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SA 5569. Mr. TOOMEY (for himself and Mr. Cardin) submitted an
amendment intended to be proposed to amendment SA 5499 submitted by Mr.
Reed (for himself and Mr. Inhofe) and intended to be proposed to the
bill H.R. 7900, to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2023 for
military activities of the Department of Defense, for military
construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy,
to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for
other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:
At the end of title XII, add the following:
Subtitle G--Masih Alinejad HUNT Act of 2022
SEC. 1281. SHORT TITLE.
This title may be cited as the ``Masih Alinejad Harassment
and Unlawful Targeting Act of 2022'' or the ``Masih Alinejad
HUNT Act of 2022''.
SEC. 1282. FINDINGS.
Congress finds that the Government of the Islamic Republic
of Iran surveils, harasses, terrorizes, tortures, abducts,
and murders individuals who peacefully defend human rights
and freedoms in Iran, and innocent entities and individuals
considered by the Government of Iran to be enemies of that
regime, including United States citizens on United States
soil, and takes foreign nationals hostage, including in the
following instances:
(1) In 2021, Iranian intelligence agents were indicted for
plotting to kidnap United States citizen, women's rights
activist, and journalist Masih Alinejad, from her home in New
York City, in retaliation for exercising her rights under the
First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Iranian agents allegedly spent at least approximately half a
million dollars to capture the outspoken critic of the
authoritarianism of the Government of Iran, and studied
evacuating her by military-style speedboats to Venezuela
before rendition to Iran.
(2) Prior to the New York kidnapping plot, Ms. Alinejad's
family in Iran was instructed by authorities to lure Ms.
Alinejad to Turkey. In an attempt to intimidate her into
silence, the Government of Iran arrested 3 of Ms. Alinejad's
family members in 2019, and sentenced her brother to 8 years
in prison for refusing to denounce her.
[[Page S4938]]
(3) According to Federal prosecutors, the same Iranian
intelligence network that allegedly plotted to kidnap Ms.
Alinejad is also targeting critics of the Government of Iran
who live in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab
Emirates.
(4) In 2021, an Iranian diplomat was convicted in Belgium
of attempting to carry out a 2018 bombing of a dissident
rally in France.
(5) In 2021, a Danish high court found a Norwegian citizen
of Iranian descent guilty of illegal espionage and complicity
in a failed plot to kill an Iranian Arab dissident figure in
Denmark.
(6) In 2021, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
appealed to the United Nations to protect BBC Persian
employees in London who suffer regular harassment and threats
of kidnapping by Iranian government agents.
(7) In 2021, 15 militants allegedly working on behalf of
the Government of Iran were arrested in Ethiopia for plotting
to attack citizens of Israel, the United States, and the
United Arab Emirates, according to United States officials.
(8) In 2020, Iranian agents allegedly kidnapped United
States resident and Iranian-German journalist Jamshid
Sharmahd, while he was traveling to India through Dubai.
Iranian authorities announced they had seized Mr. Sharmahd in
``a complex operation'', and paraded him blindfolded on state
television. Mr. Sharmahd is arbitrarily detained in Iran,
allegedly facing the death penalty. In 2009, Mr. Sharmahd was
the target of an alleged Iran-directed assassination plot in
Glendora, California.
(9) In 2020, the Government of Turkey released
counterterrorism files exposing how Iranian authorities
allegedly collaborated with drug gangs to kidnap Habib Chabi,
an Iranian-Swedish activist for Iran's Arab minority. In
2020, the Government of Iran allegedly lured Mr. Chabi to
Istanbul through a female agent posing as a potential lover.
Mr. Chabi was then allegedly kidnapped from Istanbul, and
smuggled into Iran where he faces execution, following a sham
trial.
(10) In 2020, a United States-Iranian citizen and an
Iranian resident of California pleaded guilty to charges of
acting as illegal agents of the Government of Iran by
surveilling Jewish student facilities, including the Hillel
Center and Rohr Chabad Center at the University of Chicago,
in addition to surveilling and collecting identifying
information about United States citizens and nationals who
are critical of the Iranian regime.
(11) In 2019, 2 Iranian intelligence officers at the
Iranian consulate in Turkey allegedly orchestrated the
assassination of Iranian dissident journalist Masoud Molavi
Vardanjani, who was shot while walking with a friend in
Istanbul. Unbeknownst to Mr. Molavi, his ``friend'' was in
fact an undercover Iranian agent and the leader of the
killing squad, according to a Turkish police report.
(12) In 2019, around 1,500 people were allegedly killed
amid a less than 2 week crackdown by security forces on anti-
government protests across Iran, including at least an
alleged 23 children and 400 women.
(13) In 2019, Iranian operatives allegedly lured Paris-
based Iranian journalist Ruhollah Zam to Iraq, where he was
abducted, and hanged in Iran for sedition.
(14) In 2019, a Kurdistan regional court convicted an
Iranian female for trying to lure Voice of America reporter
Ali Javanmardi to a hotel room in Irbil, as part of a foiled
Iranian intelligence plot to kidnap and extradite Mr.
Javanmardi, a critic of the Government of Iran.
(15) In 2019, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents
visited the rural Connecticut home of Iran-born United States
author and poet Roya Hakakian to warn her that she was the
target of an assassination plot orchestrated by the
Government of Iran.
(16) In 2019, the Government of Denmark accused the
Government of Iran of directing the assassination of Iranian
Arab activist Ahmad Mola Nissi, in The Hague, and the
assassination of another opposition figure, Reza Kolahi
Samadi, who was murdered near Amsterdam in 2015.
(17) In 2018, German security forces searched for 10
alleged spies who were working for Iran's al-Quds Force to
collect information on targets related to the local Jewish
community, including kindergartens.
(18) In 2017, Germany convicted a Pakistani man for working
as an Iranian agent to spy on targets including a former
German lawmaker and a French-Israeli economics professor.
(19) In 2012, an Iranian American pleaded guilty to
conspiring with members of the Iranian military to bomb a
popular Washington, DC, restaurant with the aim of
assassinating the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the United
States.
(20) In 1996, agents of the Government of Iran allegedly
assassinated 5 Iranian dissident exiles across Turkey,
Pakistan, and Baghdad, over a 5-month period that year.
(21) In 1992, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the
United Kingdom expelled 2 Iranians employed at the Iranian
Embassy in London and a third Iranian on a student visa amid
allegations they were plotting to kill Indian-born British
American novelist Salman Rushdie, pursuant to the fatwa
issued by then supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini.
(22) In 1992, 4 Iranian Kurdish dissidents were
assassinated at a restaurant in Berlin, Germany, allegedly by
Iranian agents.
(23) In 1992, singer, actor, poet, and gay Iranian
dissident Fereydoun Farrokhzad was found dead with multiple
stab wounds in his apartment in Germany. His death is
allegedly the work of Iran-directed agents.
(24) In 1980, Ali Akbar Tabatabaei, a leading critic of
Iran and then president of the Iran Freedom Foundation, was
murdered in front of his Bethesda, Maryland, home by an
assassin disguised as a postal courier. The Federal Bureau of
Investigation had identified the ``mailman'' as Dawud
Salahuddin, born David Theodore Belfield. Mr. Salahuddin was
working as a security guard at an Iranian interest office in
Washington, DC, when he claims he accepted the assignment and
payment of $5,000 from the Government of Iran to kill Mr.
Tabatabaei.
(25) Other exiled Iranian dissidents alleged to have been
victims of the Government of Iran's murderous
extraterritorial campaign include Shahriar Shafiq, Shapour
Bakhtiar, and Gholam Ali Oveissi.
(26) Iranian Americans face an ongoing campaign of
intimidation both in the virtual and physical world by agents
and affiliates of the Government of Iran, which aims to
stifle freedom of expression and eliminate the threat Iranian
authorities believe democracy, justice, and gender equality
pose to their rule.
SEC. 1283. DEFINITIONS.
In this title:
(1) Admission; admitted; alien.--The terms ``admission'',
``admitted'', and ``alien'' have the meanings given those
terms in section 101 of the Immigration and Nationality Act
(8 U.S.C. 1101).
(2) Appropriate congressional committees.--The term
``appropriate congressional committees'' means--
(A) the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
and the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate; and
(B) the Committee on Financial Services and the Committee
on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives.
(3) Correspondent account; payable-through account.--The
terms ``correspondent account'' and ``payable-through
account'' have the meanings given those terms in section
5318A of title 31, United States Code.
(4) Foreign financial institution.--The term ``foreign
financial institution'' has the meaning of that term as
determined by the Secretary of the Treasury pursuant to
section 104(i) of the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions,
Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010 (22 U.S.C.
8513(i)).
(5) Foreign person.--The term ``foreign person'' means any
individual or entity that is not a United States person.
(6) United states person.--The term ``United States
person'' means--
(A) a United States citizen or an alien lawfully admitted
for permanent residence to the United States; or
(B) an entity organized under the laws of the United States
or any jurisdiction within the United States, including a
foreign branch of such an entity.
SEC. 1284. REPORT AND IMPOSITION OF SANCTIONS WITH RESPECT TO
PERSONS WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR OR COMPLICIT IN
ABUSES TOWARD DISSIDENTS ON BEHALF OF THE
GOVERNMENT OF IRAN.
(a) Report Required.--
(1) In general.--Not later than 45 days after the date of
the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of State, in
consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury, the Director
of National Intelligence, and the Attorney General, shall
submit to the appropriate congressional committees a report
that--
(A) includes a detailed description and assessment of--
(i) the state of human rights and the rule of law inside
Iran, including the rights and well-being of women, religious
and ethnic minorities, and the LGBTQ community in Iran;
(ii) actions taken by the Government of Iran during the
year preceding submission of the report to target and silence
dissidents both inside and outside of Iran who advocate for
human rights inside Iran;
(iii) the methods used by the Government of Iran to target
and silence dissidents both inside and outside of Iran; and
(iv) the means through which the Government of Iran
finances efforts to target and silence dissidents both inside
and outside of Iran;
(B) identifies foreign persons working as part of the
Government of Iran or acting on behalf of that Government
(including members of paramilitary organizations such as
Ansar-e-Hezbollah and Basij-e Mostaz'afin), that the
Secretary of State determines, based on credible evidence,
are knowingly responsible for, complicit in or involved in
ordering, conspiring, planning or implementing the
surveillance, harassment, kidnapping, illegal extradition,
imprisonment, torture, killing, or assassination of citizens
of Iran (including citizens of Iran of dual nationality) or
citizens of the United States inside or outside Iran who
seek--
(i) to expose illegal or corrupt activity carried out by
officials of the Government of Iran;
(ii) to obtain, exercise, defend, or promote
internationally recognized human rights and freedoms, such as
the freedoms of religion, expression, association, and
assembly, and the rights to a fair trial and democratic
elections, in Iran; or
(iii) to obtain, exercise, defend, or promote the rights
and well-being of women, religious
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and ethnic minorities, and the LGBTQ community in Iran; and
(C) includes, for each foreign person identified
subparagraph (B), a clear explanation for why the foreign
person was so identified.
(2) Updates of report.--The report required by paragraph
(1) shall be updated, and the updated version submitted to
the appropriate congressional committees, during the 10-year
period following the date of the enactment of this Act--
(A) not less frequently than annually; and
(B) with respect to matters relating to the identification
of foreign persons under paragraph (1)(B), on an ongoing
basis as new information becomes available.
(3) Form of report.--
(A) In general.--Each report required by paragraph (1) and
each update required by paragraph (2) shall be submitted in
unclassified form but may include a classified annex.
(B) Public availability.--The Secretary of State shall post
the unclassified portion of each report required by paragraph
(1) and each update required by paragraph (2) on a publicly
available internet website of the Department of State.
(b) Imposition of Sanctions.--In the case of a foreign
person identified under paragraph (1)(B) of subsection (a) in
the most recent report or update submitted under that
subsection, the President shall--
(1) if the foreign person meets the criteria for the
imposition of sanctions under subsection (a) of section 1263
of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (22
U.S.C. 10102), impose sanctions under subsection (b) of that
section; and
(2) if the foreign person does not meet such criteria,
impose the sanctions described in subsection (c).
(c) Sanctions Described.--The sanctions to be imposed under
this subsection with respect to a foreign person are the
following:
(1) Blocking of property.--The President shall exercise all
powers granted to the President by the International
Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) to the
extent necessary to block and prohibit all transactions in
all property and interests in property of the person if such
property and interests in property are in the United States,
come within the United States, or are or come within the
possession or control of a United States person.
(2) Ineligibility for visas, admission, or parole.--
(A) In general.--
(i) Visas, admission, or parole.--An alien described in
subsection (a)(1)(B) is--
(I) inadmissible to the United States;
(II) ineligible to receive a visa or other documentation to
enter the United States; and
(III) otherwise ineligible to be admitted or paroled into
the United States or to receive any other benefit under the
Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101 et seq.).
(ii) Current visas revoked.--
(I) In general.--The visa or other entry documentation of
an alien described in subsection (a)(1)(B) shall be revoked,
regardless of when such visa or other entry documentation is
or was issued.
(II) Immediate effect.--A revocation under subclause (I)
shall--
(aa) take effect immediately; and
(bb) automatically cancel any other valid visa or entry
documentation that is in the alien's possession.
(d) Termination of Sanctions.--The President may terminate
the application of sanctions under this section with respect
to a person if the President determines and reports to the
appropriate congressional committees, not later than 15 days
before the termination of the sanctions that--
(1) credible information exists that the person did not
engage in the activity for which sanctions were imposed;
(2) the person has been prosecuted appropriately for the
activity for which sanctions were imposed; or
(3) the person has--
(A) credibly demonstrated a significant change in behavior;
(B) has paid an appropriate consequence for the activity
for which sanctions were imposed; and
(C) has credibly committed to not engage in an activity
described in subsection (a) in the future.
SEC. 1285. REPORT AND IMPOSITION OF SANCTIONS WITH RESPECT TO
FOREIGN FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS CONDUCTING
SIGNIFICANT TRANSACTIONS WITH PERSONS
RESPONSIBLE FOR OR COMPLICIT IN ABUSES TOWARD
DISSIDENTS ON BEHALF OF THE GOVERNMENT OF IRAN.
(a) Report Required.--
(1) In general.--Not earlier than 30 days and not later
than 60 days after the Secretary of State submits to the
appropriate congressional committees a report required by
section 1284(a), the Secretary of the Treasury, in
consultation with the Secretary of State, shall submit to the
appropriate congressional committees a report that identifies
any foreign financial institution that knowingly conducts a
significant transaction with a foreign person identified in
the report submitted under section 1284(a).
(2) Form of report.--
(A) In general.--Each report required by paragraph (1)
shall be submitted in unclassified form but may include a
classified annex.
(B) Public availability.--The Secretary of the Treasury
shall post the unclassified portion of each report required
by paragraph (1) on a publicly available internet website of
the Department of the Treasury.
(b) Imposition of Sanctions.--The Secretary of the Treasury
may prohibit the opening, or prohibit or impose strict
conditions on the maintaining, in the United States of a
correspondent account or a payable-through account by a
foreign financial institution identified under subsection
(a)(1).
SEC. 1286. EXCEPTIONS; WAIVERS; IMPLEMENTATION.
(a) Exceptions.--
(1) Exception for intelligence, law enforcement, and
national security activities.--Sanctions under sections 1284
and 1285 shall not apply to any authorized intelligence, law
enforcement, or national security activities of the United
States.
(2) Exception to comply with united nations headquarters
agreement.--Sanctions under section 1284(c)(2) shall not
apply with respect to the admission of an alien to the United
States if the admission of the alien is necessary to permit
the United States to comply with the Agreement regarding the
Headquarters of the United Nations, signed at Lake Success
June 26, 1947, and entered into force November 21, 1947,
between the United Nations and the United States, the
Convention on Consular Relations, done at Vienna April 24,
1963, and entered into force March 19, 1967, or other
applicable international obligations.
(b) National Security Waiver.--The President may waive the
application of sanctions under section 1284 with respect to a
person if the President--
(1) determines that the waiver is in the national security
interests of the United States; and
(2) submits to the appropriate congressional committees a
report on the waiver and the reasons for the waiver.
(c) Implementation; Penalties.--
(1) Implementation.--The President may exercise all
authorities provided to the President under sections 203 and
205 of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50
U.S.C. 1702 and 1704) to carry out this Act.
(2) Penalties.--A person that violates, attempts to
violate, conspires to violate, or causes a violation of
section 1284(b)(1) or 1285(b) or any regulation, license, or
order issued to carry out either such section shall be
subject to the penalties set forth in subsections (b) and (c)
of section 206 of the International Emergency Economic Powers
Act (50 U.S.C. 1705) to the same extent as a person that
commits an unlawful act described in subsection (a) of that
section.
SEC. 1287. EXCEPTION RELATING TO IMPORTATION OF GOODS.
(a) In General.--Notwithstanding any other provision of
this title, the authorities and requirements to impose
sanctions under this title shall not include the authority or
a requirement to impose sanctions on the importation of
goods.
(b) Good Defined.--In this section, the term ``good'' means
any article, natural or manmade substance, material, supply
or manufactured product, including inspection and test
equipment, and excluding technical data.
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