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Congress weighs in with support of Iranian protestors

As mourners clashed with police on the streets of Iran, Congress passed a resolution condemning the government for its suppression of basic freedoms and its long track record of human rights abuses. The sense of the Senate resolution passed by unanimous consent late Tuesday. It’s chief sponsors included Sens. Ted Kaufman, D-DE, Joseph Lieberman, I-CT, ...

As mourners clashed with police on the streets of Iran, Congress passed a resolution condemning the government for its suppression of basic freedoms and its long track record of human rights abuses.

As mourners clashed with police on the streets of Iran, Congress passed a resolution condemning the government for its suppression of basic freedoms and its long track record of human rights abuses.

The sense of the Senate resolution passed by unanimous consent late Tuesday. It’s chief sponsors included Sens. Ted Kaufman, D-DE, Joseph Lieberman, I-CT, John McCain, R-AZ, and Carl Levin, D-MI. The text runs down a litany of abuses perpetrated by the Iranian regime since the June 12 elections.

The resolution also quotes President Obama, who on Dec. 10 while accepting the Nobel Prize, made some relevant comments:

‘‘We will bear witness to the quiet dignity of reformers… to the hundreds of thousands who have marched silently through the streets of Iran. It is telling that the leaders of these governments fear the aspirations of their own people more than the power of any other nation. And it is the responsibility of all free people and free nations to make clear to these movements that hope and history are on their side.”

Read the whole resolution here:

"There is something happening inside Iranian society. It’s hard to predict how it will unfold," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Tuesday, "The angst that we continue to see within Iranian society is of great concern to us, and we think that ultimately, the Government of Iran has to change its relationship with its own people."

Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.

Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.

A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.

Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin

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