MR BROWN: Good morning, everyone.
Welcome to the State Department.
Thanks for coming.
Joining us today in the briefing room is Special Representative for Iran and Senior Advisor
to the Secretary Brian Hook.
He’ll be addressing Iran’s continued malign behavior throughout the world and the U.S.
maximum pressure campaign to deter that behavior.
Brian will begin with some opening remarks, and then we’ll take a few questions.
Brian.
MR HOOK: Good morning.
I have three announcements today on Iran, but I will first start by addressing the atrocities
the Iranian regime has committed against its own people.
On November 16th, protests were spreading throughout the country.
In Mahshahr, a city in southwest Iran, a number of Iranian demonstrators blocked a road.
The State Department has received videos of what happened next.
Without warning, the IRGC opened fire on the protesters, killing several people.
Many of the protesters fled to nearby marshlands to escape.
The IRGC tracked them down and surrounded them with machine guns mounted on trucks.
They then sprayed the protesters with bullets.
Between the rounds of machine gun fire, the screams of the victims can be heard.
In this one incident alone, the regime murdered as many as a hundred Iranians and possibly
more.
When it was over, the regime loaded the bodies into trucks.
We do not yet know where these bodies went, but we are learning more and more about how
the Iranian regime treats its own people.
We have seen reports of many hundreds more killed in and around Tehran.
And as the truth is trickling out of Iran, it appears the regime could have murdered
over a thousand Iranian citizens since the protests began.
We cannot be certain because the regime blocks information.
Among those murdered are at least a dozen children, including 13 and 14-year-olds.
We have received reports from family members of victims who tried to recover the bodies.
The authorities demanded that the families first pay the cost of the bullets they used.
In many cases, authorities would not hand over the bodies until their family promised
not to hold public funerals.
Many thousands of Iranians have been wounded, and at least 7,000 protesters have been detained
in Iran’s prisons.
Many of these protesters have been sent to two prisons, the Great Tehran Penitentiary
and Qarchak Prison.
Today Secretary Pompeo has determined these entities meet the criteria for gross human
rights violations set out in CAATSA, and the State Department is submitting to Congress
the names of these entities.
The Great Tehran Penitentiary is known for is inhumane living conditions, which consist
of unsanitary and crowded corridors, rodent infestations, insufficient food, water, and
medical care.
We have seen reports that protesters have been subject to abuse and mistreatment during
interrogations, arbitrary beatings, and rape.
Qarchak Prison is Iran’s largest women’s prison, and also holds many members of religious
minority communities.
It too is known for unbearable conditions, including regular assaults and inappropriate
behavior of prison guards towards women, chronic lack of water, unsanitary living spaces, and
an environment that enables rape and murder.
The United States calls for the immediate release of all protesters detained in prison,
as well as all the political prisoners currently held by the regime.
Now is the time for all nations to stand with the Iranian people, diplomatically isolate
the regime, and sanction those officials who are responsible for murdering innocent Iranians.
There has been overwhelming support for the Iranian people by the American people.
It is clear there is a bipartisan consensus that the regime’s treatment of the Iranian
people is abhorrent and unacceptable.
We are unified here in the United States, and the international community likewise should
be unified and support the Iranian people.
These protests have made clear what Secretary Pompeo and I have been saying for quite some
time: The Iranian people want the regime to focus on investing in people, not proxies.
They are sick of the regime squandering its wealth on proxy warfare, which leads only
to economic pressure and diplomatic isolation.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what the Iranian regime continues to do, even while the Iranian
people were filling the streets, calling for an end to sectarian adventurism.
On November 25th, a U.S. warship conducted a flag verification boarding in international
waters off the coast of Yemen.
We interdicted a significant hoard of weapons and missile parts, evidently of Iranian origin.
As you can see from the images behind me, the seizure includes sophisticated weapons,
sophisticated components of anti-ship cruise missiles, land attack cruise missiles, air
defense missiles, and anti-tank missiles.
The vessel reportedly was heading to Yemen to deliver these weapons.
The weapon components comprise the most sophisticated weapons seized by the U.S. Navy to date during
the Yemen conflict.
I want to congratulate the U.S. Armed Forces and the U.S. Coast Guard for this important
interdiction.
This discovery is yet more proof of Iran’s efforts to inflame conflicts in the region
by proliferating deadly weapons to its proxies.
It is also further evidence of how Iran repeatedly violates the UN arms embargo which has been
in place for over a decade.
We should recall that the Houthis proposed a cessation of missile and air attacks with
Saudi Arabia just days after the Iranians struck Saudi oil installations on September
14th.
The Houthis’ de-escalation proposal, which the Saudis are responding to, shows that Iran
clearly does not speak for the Houthis, nor have the best interests of the Yemeni people
at heart.
Iran is trying to prolong Yemen’s civil war to project power.
Iran should follow the calls of its own people and end its involvement in Yemen.
The Yemeni people have suffered far too long, and Iran has no legitimate interests in Yemen.
Also relating to Yemen, I am announcing today that the State Department’s Rewards for
Justice program is offering up to $15 million for information on the financial activities,
networks, and associates of Abdul Reza Shahlai.
He is a Yemen-based high-ranking commander of the IRGC’s Qods Force.
This is a part of the Rewards for Justice program for information leading to the disruption
of IRGC operations.
Shahlai has a long history of attacks Americans and our allies globally.
He planned multiple assassinations of coalition forces in Iraq, provided weapons and explosives
to violent Shia extremist groups, and planned the January 20th, 2007 attack in Karbala that
killed five American soldiers and wounded three others.
In 2011, Shahlai funded and directed a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the
United States, Adel al-Jubeir.
This would have been carried out in a restaurant in Georgetown.
Shahlai also aimed to carry out follow-on attacks in the United States and elsewhere.
Had this scheme succeeded, as many as 200 innocent civilians in the United States could
have been killed.
Given Shahlai’s track record of terrorism and destabilization in Iraq, we remain gravely
concerned by his presence in Yemen and potential role in providing advanced weaponry of the
kind that we have interdicted to the Houthis.
Iranian UAVs, missiles, and explosive boats have been used by the Houthis to threaten
key civilian and economic interests and otherwise wreak havoc in the region.
This designation, together with the recent interdiction in Yemen, underscores our commitment
to deny Iran the means to run an expansionist foreign policy.
We call on the international community to join us in holding Iran accountable for its
acts of terror both against the nations of the world and against the Iranian people.
I want to close on one observation about the protests.
The Iranian regime keeps losing major constituencies in its revolutionary base: first the students,
then the middle class and merchants, then the working class, and even many of the clergy
who criticize the regime.
Now, in the latest protests, nine seminaries were burned.
The only support left for the regime is with a handful of clerics whom the Iranian people
despise for having imposed 40 years of brutality on them.
The regime now maintains its grip on power through brute force.
Can take a few questions.