Thread by @RoyaTheWriter

Here are the highlights of my testimony at the US Senate's Human Rights Caucus last Monday:

1) The first step that the US administration can take to help the movement inside Iran is to cease downplaying what is happening in Iran and call it by its real name: A revolution.

https://twitter.com/RoyaTheWriter/status/1592253365358137347

2) This is the greatest democratic movement Iran's known not only since 1979, but since 1906--the Constitutional Revolution. These revolutionaries aren't driven by leftist or rightist ideologies, but the basic desires that have been the underpinnings of all democratic movements.

3) Lifting or not lifting the sanctions is a matter that's only the concern of Washington pundits and politicians. In Iran, despite the grave economic pains, the people's demands center around basic liberties and individual dignity.

4) To prevent the possibility of the US having to apologize to Iranians, as Obama did in Cairo in 2009 for the coup of 1953, is to not commit the error in the first place. Continuing with the nuke negotiations will be to commit another error far worse than what the US did in 1953

5) To attribute the roots of this movement to Trump pulling out of the JCPOA or even to the sanctions is to strip Iranians of agency and to give into American narcissism, while also neglecting the brutality and corruption of the regime.

6) Yes, China might get anxious about the US and EU support of Iran. But Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Venezuela, etc. will hail the move. We must balance the cost benefit in broader global terms.
#MahsaAmini