Finding that the President has not Complied with Section 2 of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DeSAULNIER. I thank the gentleman from Maryland, the distinguished ranking member of the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I want to speak as a freshman Member of this body who has been able to learn a great deal about this difficult, difficult area of the world--a place where America has invested too many lives and too much money--and to talk about my journey in coming to the decision to vote with the President and feeling like he deserves a congratulatory note for this accomplishment in a very difficult and complex piece of diplomacy, perhaps equal to the difficulty and the complexity of this area of the world which has had so much turmoil and history.

I have spent the last 60 days taking every opportunity to listen to constituents and experts.

I, with a small group of my freshman colleagues, have been personally briefed at the White House by President Obama. I traveled to Israel for the first time and met with high-level Israeli officials for almost 2 hours, including with Prime Minister Netanyahu. I learned about the 3,000 years of history and animosity amongst groups and also of the very close proximity in which those groups have lived for thousands of years and shared their difficult history. I met with leaders of our international coalition, and I continue to be a staunch supporter of the U.S.-Israeli relationship as, I believe, most of my colleagues on both sides are.

I held six townhalls--a certain measure of masochism, perhaps, by a freshman Member--that took hours, meeting with both pro and opponents in my district, in the San Francisco Bay Area. We received over 1,000 phone calls, emails, and constituent questions on this issue, and more than 70 percent of them were in favor of the proposal.

Ultimately, at the heart of my decision in supporting a deal is the possibility that this deal promotes the long-term investment in peace on this difficult part of our planet. In addition, it creates security and stability, ultimately, for the United States. I believe that this accord is our best option for achieving both of those goals.

As recently as yesterday, I was able to listen to advisers and leaders who represent our coalition partners. The sanctions regime, due in large part to the European Union's participation, deflated Iran's economy and forced them to the negotiating table. In 2012, Iran's economy shrank for the first time in two decades by almost 2 percent.

This is the final proposal, I believe, if the U.S. were to withdraw. Our coalition partners that helped negotiate this deal and create the ability and the leverage to negotiate will not come back to the table. Our authority and standing in the world community will be severely diminished.

There are some who say that Iran cannot be trusted, and I think we all agree on that. The future of this rollout is not black-and-white, and it has many unknowns and hypotheticals on both the supporters' and the opponents' sides. We do not know if Iran will cheat, but we do know that oversight and compliance is strong and consequential, and consequences for cheating will be enforced by the international community.

In my view, it is in the national security interests of the United States of America to support this agreement. It is an opportunity to let diplomacy work and to put it in action.

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