Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank the witness, Ms. Boroumand, for being with us today and sharing with us an important narrative of the critical mass of human rights violations in Iran, the increase in arrests, prosecutions, and executions. I think something that we sometimes ignore is the criminalization of dissent and the criminalization of innocence and the impunity that attends it. You've also described another matter, which I think is often ignored, and that is the manipulative character of the Iranian leadership that would teach to marginalize, exclude, and even push into exile those who had hopes and will no longer be relevant.
As well, I think it was important for you to describe some of the important positive indicators, the voices that are emerging, the technology of communication, and the fact that Iran is a state party to international human rights conventions that use the language of human rights, and we should, in fact, use that narrative in turn to hold them to account.
Some of those voices have been heard, in particular in what some have called an unprecedented way, in the last week in the run-up to the election in Iran. Do you foresee any change, given the limited number of candidates that were allowed to run, and do those candidates themselves share a basic ideology? In a word, does it make a difference if Ahmadinejad is defeated and someone else, like Mousavi, takes his place?