The House will vote Tuesday on whether to impose more sanctions on Iran and its leaders — a move Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) says is aimed at discouraging the country from committing further "heinous acts."
Both the Mahsa Amini Human Rights and Security Accountability Act and the Fight CRIME Act will head to the House floor on Tuesday after receiving bipartisan support. Mills, who was a co-sponsor and vocal supporter of both, views the bills through a personal lens after serving as a combat veteran for nearly seven years during the Iraq War.
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"My passion comes from my own personal experiences and watching Iran's activities while I was abroad, you know, and my personal experience of watching guys that I considered to be brothers who lost their lives because of Iranian activities throughout the nation," Mills said in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
The MAHSA Act would require the president to impose property- and visa-blocking sanctions on individuals affiliated with Iran who are "complicit in supporting human rights abuses or terrorism." It is named after Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman who was killed after she was arrested for allegedly violating Iran's mandatory Islamic dress code.
"It's really more about those who believe in human rights and is trying to find ways to not only prevent but potentially discourage those types of heinous acts from continuing to occur," Mills said of the bill.
An amendment from Mills is included in the MAHSA Act, which was originally introduced by Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN). Mills said the bill was being "diluted" by Democrats in the House Foreign Affairs Committee but eventually received the support of all Republicans and a few Democrats to push the bill through.
The Florida congressman said his amendment strengthened the language to ensure that the bill will "go after those who are part of the regime" but also proxy actors of Iran.
"This really does strengthen [the bill] and I think that's the key element of this, and it also pays the honor and respect to the young woman who was, you know, wrongfully and heinously murdered in her own country," Mills said. He said he feels "confident" that the bill will pass Tuesday.
The Fight CRIME Act would impose sanctions on any efforts to "acquire, possess, develop, transport, transfer, or deploy" Iranian missiles, which Mills said have "essentially gotten out of control."
He said the bill will require the Department of State to "step up" and report to Congress on diplomatic strategies to renew international restrictions, as well as restrict certain types of arms or technology transfers.
The United Nations has its own set of restrictions and bans on Iran's missile program, which expire in October. However, Mills said that, on many occasions, he has seen the U.N. Security Council do "relatively nothing" in cases of violations or Iranian efforts to transport missiles.
In May, Iran unveiled its newest long-range ballistic missile, which Western nations said violated the U.N. Security Council's resolution 2231. The resolution endorsed the Iran nuclear deal, but the language of the resolution has been criticized for being ambiguous.
Western officials say that, while the missile did violate the 2231 resolution, it did not violate the Iran nuclear deal between Iran, the United States, France, Russia, China, Germany, and Britain, according to the Iran International Newsroom.
The U.S. withdrew from the deal under former President Donald Trump in 2018, so it could not take action using that avenue. The U.N.'s negotiation to restore the Iran nuclear deal stalled in July after Iran transferred unmanned aerial vehicles to Russia for its war against Ukraine.
"I would like to see the United Nations Security Council actually step up and start taking stronger action," Mills said. "But I think that if they're not going to do that, in lieu of this, the United States needs to at least be demonstrating that they're the world leader willing to hold those accountable for malign actions and violations of international treaties."
"Iran is one of those that is a risk not only to the United States, but it's a risk to our ally, like Israel," Mills continued. "I was personally impacted by an Iranian EFP in 2006 and April in Baghdad, Iraq, that injured three out of the five guys in my vehicle. So I know the activities and the actions that's gone on."
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He said he views Iran as a proxy actor of China, which he called the greatest threat to America internationally — a reason why Mills views the recent decision from the Biden administration to release five Iranian nationals and unfreeze $6 billion in frozen Iranian cash in exchange for Iran's release of five Americans detained in the nation as a "bad deal."
"The fact that we continue to get into these really bad deals and that we continue to try and put funding into known terrorist organizations or into the actual hands of malign actors and you know, state or non-state actors — I think is a really dangerous precedent," Mills said.