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Today at a rally in Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, "The pretext (Holocaust) for the creation of the Zionist regime (Israel) is false ... It is a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim," and that, "this regime (Israel) will not last long.  Do not tie your fate to it ... This regime has no future.  Its life has come to an end."

Next week, Ahmadinejad will arrive in New York City to attend the United Nations General Assembly.  Again, Ahmadinejad will be given an opportunity to spout anti-American, anti-Jewish, and anti-freedom talking points taken right out of the Grand Ayatollah's talking points.  Recall, this is the man who claimed there were no homosexuals in the Iranian Republic of over seventy million people.  Ahmadinejad should tell that to the families of the young teenagers who were hung from the gallows in downtown Masshad because they were accused of homosexual activity.

Ahmadinejad made outrageous remarks at the last UN General Assembly, yet since the grandstanding, he has transformed the rhetoric into action.  The advancing Iranian nuclear program backs up the anti-American, anti-Jewish rhetoric we heard last year at the UN.  This is not the only reason the world must impose real economic sanctions on Iran.  Ahmadinejad has turned on his own people, citizens of his own country who merely wanted to vote in a free and fair election.  The only way to save the brave reformers in Iran is to impose sanctions that will cripple the Ahmadinejad-Ayatollah regime.

Of course, sanctions not only impact governments, they impact people.  Though economic sanctions will no doubt make life harder for Iranians now, sanctions are the only viable option on the table save for a full military invasion that will cost thousands of innocent lives.

There are two reasons why Iran must be sanctioned by the UN.  First, Iran must be held accountable for the hundreds of human rights violations it has carried out against its own people in response to the public outcry following the Iranian elections.  Here are just a few examples of what has happened to those reformers in Iran who refused to remain silent any longer.

In June, the Ahmadinejad government began illegally arresting many high level supporters of opposition candidate Mir Houssein Mousavi.  Mr. Mostafa Tajzadeh, former Deputy Interior Minister in the Khatemi government, Mr. Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, former Khatemi government spokesperson, and Mr. Mohsen Aminzadeh, former Deputy Foreign Minister, have each been arrested, interrogated, jailed, and now face prosecution.  Amnesty International has confirmed reports of screaming heard during their interrogations and Mr. Tajzadeh's wife has said that both her and her husband's attorney have been denied consultations with her husband during his imprisonment.  On September 7, Alireza Beheshti, a senior aide to Mir Houssein Mousavi, was arrested.

Not only have high-level Ahmadinejad opponents been arrested, Iranian human rights lawyers and ordinary Iranian citizens are being systematically rounded up by the hundreds.  Inside Iranian detention centers, citizens detained for 'inciting unrest' have been murdered, raped, and tortured.  The incidents of rape are so widespread and violent that Mehdi Karroubi, a candidate in the June 12 election, wrote a letter to the head of the 86 Cleric Assembly of Experts stating that, "a number of detainees have stated that some female detainees were so severely raped that their genitals were damaged.  Others savagely raped young boys so that they suffer from depression and serious physical and mental damage."

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