Rep. Ed Royce: People of Iran are disenfranchised by the mullahs’ regime.

Rep. Ed Royce: People of Iran are disenfranchised by the mullahs’ regime.

NCRI - U.S. Congressman Ed Royce (R-CA), Chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, on Thursday addressed the threats posed by the mullahs' regime in Iran during a strategic conversation on U.S. foreign policy at the Stimson Center.

Rep. Royce took part in the forum event with Ambassador Lincoln P. Bloomfield Jr., a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs and current Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Stimson Center.

Rep. Royce said that the people of Iran are being “disenfranchised” by the mullahs’ regime.

He rejected the outcome of the regime’s sham Parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections in February, pointing out that candidates that were not loyal enough to the regime’s Supreme Leader Militarywere automatically disqualified.

"The election was in fact between the hardliners in Iran and the very hardliners in Iran. At the end of the day every one of those candidates was picked by the ayatollah," he said.

U.S. policy towards the Iranian regime has not succeeded in changing Khamenei’s attitude, he said.

“If we look at the number of people put to death and the political prisoners in Iran last year, it was much higher than the year before. It is a number which is going up.”