Thank you, Mr. Sweet. I appreciate your question. When I sat on this committee, I was always able to respect your consistent and committed involvement in the work of this committee and beyond.
In the particular matter with regard to the importance of publicity, I just might add parenthetically that you are right about the fact that I added a fifth threat to the fourfold threat that used to underpin my involvement here on Iranian accountability at the time, but this also demonstrates and dramatizes an additional concern that we now must have with Iran, and that is its regional hegemonic belligerency. That relates, as I say, to what is happening in the Middle East. You made reference to Yemen. There, you have the extension of the persecution with regard to the Bahá'ís in Yemen, as well as its overall belligerency in that regard, along with Syria in particular.
In the matter of human rights and the importance of relating to it, if we indulge in a culture of impunity with regard to massive human rights violations in Iran, that not only undermines our engagement with respect to human rights, but it in fact undermines the nuclear agreement that we have entered into with Iran, for example, because if Iran believes that they can engage in massive human rights violations with impunity and not be called to account, they may say it invites them to engage in violations of the nuclear agreement, because there too they may not be held to account.
I regretted the fact that the nuclear agreement did not include any reference to—let alone sanctioning—the other threats, but I say with regard to the matter of the nuclear agreement alone that if we do not sanction human rights violations, we may find that this itself will undermine the nuclear agreement.
This also holds true with regard to the issue of Mrs. Kazemi. If we ignore that case, if we do not engage with regard to the impunity and immunity that attended her torture and imprisonment, and if we do not hold to account and sanction those in Iran who are engaged in these human rights violations, both with respect to what happened to Mrs. Kazemi and in the situation today, then we will encourage violations across the whole fivefold threat of toxic convergence that we're seeing in Khamenei's Iran.
Again, we are here on behalf of the people of Iran to hold those in Khamenei's Iran accountable for their involvement and their assault on the people of Iran.