Hire More Heroes Act of 2015
Floor Speech
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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I come to the floor to speak to the nuclear agreement with Iran. First, having just come back from the region after having spent Sunday morning in one of the biggest refugee camps inside Syria--where 80,000, more than half of them children under the age of 18, with more than 250 every day leaving the camp because they have lost hope and they are, frankly, more willing to live inside a dangerous Syria with their lives in danger than to continue to live inside of this camp--let me associate myself with the imperative that Senator McCain laid before us, that we can do more. I don't agree with his diagnosis of how we got here, nor will I likely agree with his solution in terms of prescriptions to solve the problem, but I certainly agree that this body and the administration should be standing up and bearing our share of the burden when it comes to this humanitarian crisis, having seen it now firsthand for myself.
Peace is a messy business. As Yitzhak Rabin said upon the recognition of the PLO--a really hard thing for the Israelis to do--he said, ``You don't make peace with your friends, you make it with very unsavory enemies.'' It makes sense, right? The definition of peace is the settlement of old disputes or even just one big dispute with someone with whom one has a long history of disagreement or conflict. And unless peace comes from unconditional surrender--and that frankly doesn't happen very much in the postnuclear age--then peace by nature is going to be a compromise. It doesn't come from one side getting everything it wants. Thus, by definition, it is going to feel fairly unsatisfactory.
I say this because viewing the Iran deal through that prism allows me to understand why so many people are voting no, and it allows me to understand why many of those who are voting yes took a long time to get there, but what I have trouble understanding is all of the revisionist history that is crowding this Chamber right now. I don't think there is a single Member of the Senate who didn't in principle support the idea of negotiating an end to Iran's nuclear weapons program. And I don't remember anyone who didn't understand that the sanctions we layered upon Iran were directed at their nuclear program, not their support for Hezbollah or their detainment of hostages or any other malevolent behavior in the region. Why? Because we had a whole different set of sanctions on that activity.
But now there is all sorts of Sturm und Drang in Congress over the idea that this deal represents a give-and-take between the United States and Iran. Why didn't we get everything, a lot of people are asking; and the failure of this agreement to settle all our disputes with Iran at once--but they still do bad stuff, people say. I view these protests largely as cover for a ``no'' vote that is likely about something else because we always knew this was going to be a negotiation. We can complain about the end balance, but we can't engage in a straight-faced argument about the outrageousness of Iran getting to keep a few centrifuges. And we can all rage about Iran's support for terrorism or their dangerous talk about our sacred ally, Israel, but we all passed sanctions bills knowing they were about their nuclear program, not all of these other activities. Thus, it must stand to reason that these sanctions would be removed if Iran came to the table and satisfied our concerns about their nuclear program, not our concerns about everything else they do that is terrible.
Peace is never perfect. Diplomacy is, frankly, mostly ugly, but it matters. Because why on Earth do we spend $500 billion every year on the world's biggest, baddest, most capable military force if we aren't willing to use it? I don't mean use it in the way that Senator Graham or Senator Cotton may mean ``use it,'' I mean use it by entering into peaceful agreements that are held in place by the threat of overwhelming U.S. military force. Our planes and our bombs and our brigades, these are the muscle that ensures that agreements are lived up to, not the muscle that substitutes for a diplomatic agreement. America, more than any other country in the world, can afford to take a diplomatic risk because we can clean it up fast if it goes wrong. Now, I don't think this agreement is going to go wrong, but I sure like knowing that a bunker-busting bomb is waiting in the wings if it does. And I will sleep better at night knowing that by agreeing to this deal, we are keeping together an unprecedented international coalition that will stand with us if we need to drop that bomb--something they would not do if we dropped it without this agreement.
This body often seems to forget that American power is not simply exercised through the blunt force of military power.
And President Obama, frankly, is not the first President to be pressed by hawks in Congress, and outside of Congress, to forsake diplomacy in favor of war.
In the first meeting with legislative leaders after the announcement of Russian missiles inside Cuba, the bipartisan congressional leadership, meeting with President Kennedy, was unanimous in its support for an attack and ultimately the possible invasion of Cuba. All of them thought that talking to Russia about a negotiated solution equaled weakness. President Kennedy didn't listen, and over 13 days he worked out a peaceful solution to the Cuban Missile Crisis that history looks very kindly upon.
President Reagan, upon signing the IMF treaty with Russia, leaned over to Gorbachev as they announced the deal and said: ``The hardliners in both our countries are bleeding when we shake hands today.'' Hawks in Congress didn't want an agreement with our sworn enemy, Russia. They didn't understand why we signed a nuclear agreement with a country that was still out for American blood on so many other fronts. But history tells us that the IMF treaty was an important piece of our strategy to weaken hardliners inside Russia and open that country to reform.
I hear this analogy to 1938 and Munich almost every day, and it doesn't just come with respect to this agreement. Almost every time we sit across the table from someone we have a disagreement with, the claim is that it is Munich all over again, but Munich is the exception, not the rule. There are plenty more diplomatic agreements to avert war that went right rather than those that went wrong. It doesn't mean we don't use 1938 as a caution, but it doesn't mean it is an automatic parallel to every single time we are trying to settle our disputes with an adversary at the negotiating table rather than through the means of arms.
Our partners in the Middle East largely get this. I just returned from this trip, as I mentioned, to the region--Qatar, UAE, Iraq, Kuwait, and Jordan--with Senator Peters. In every country we visited, we heard about Iran's dangerous activity in the region, including support for the Houthis in Yemen, funding Shiite militias in Iraq, propping up the murderous Bashar al Assad in Syria, pumping money into Hezbollah and Hamas to threaten Israel, but despite these provocations, every Arab political leader whom we met with--every single one--supports this agreement. They give two basic reasons, and I want to share them because they mirror the reasons for my support as well.
First, they know that no matter how dangerous Iran is today, they shudder to think how much more dangerous Iran would be if they possessed a nuclear weapon. They believe, as I do, that this agreement is the best way to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and they support it, to a country, first and foremost for that reason.
Before this deal, Iran had 19,000 centrifuges spinning. After it, they are going to have just a few thousand. Before this deal, Iran was enriching up to 20 percent and was only a few months from being able to enrich to a level in which they could get on a pathway to a bomb. After this deal, enrichment will be down to 3.7 percent. Before this deal, Iran had an enormous stockpile of enriched uranium, and after this deal that stockpile is, for all intents and purposes, eliminated--reduced by 97 percent. Before this deal, the only way we knew what was going on in the nuclear program was through covert surveillance. After the deal, we are going to have a network of inspectors crawling over every inch of their nuclear program to make sure they aren't cheating.
Second, our Arab partners whom we visited within the region know that all of the problems in the region can't be solved without Iran at the table, and while they aren't sure this agreement by itself will draw Iran into peaceful negotiations over Syria or Yemen or Iraq--and I think none of us can be sure that is how this will play out--they are certain that a rejection of the agreement by the United States Congress will virtually guarantee that Iran will not come to the table. They talk openly about fearing a newly isolated Iran, the rejection of this agreement empowering the hardliners, punishing the moderates, and pushing Iran away from any constructive dialogue in the region. Our Arab partners don't love the terms of this agreement any more than the U.S. Senate does, but they know the alternative--a retrenched Iran with a green light to start back up their nuclear program--is the most dangerous outcome of all.
Our partners understand what supporters of the deal understand; that this idea that if Congress were to reject the agreement, we could come back to the table and get a better one is pure fiction. It is pure political fiction made up by people who don't want to sound like they don't have an alternative plan, when they really don't. No one with any credible diplomatic experience in the Middle East believes that Iran will come back to the table if Congress rejects this deal, and our international partners have told us to our face that they will not come back to the table if we reject this deal. A better deal is fantasy, plain and simple.
Here is what happens. Here is what really happens if Congress rejects this deal that is supported by all of our negotiating partners--Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia--the entirety of the Security Council and all of our Arab partners in the region. What happens is that Iran starts back up their nuclear program, centrifuges climb to 25,000, 30,000, enrichment gets closer to the level necessary for a bomb, the inspectors get kicked out--our eyes on a nuclear program disappear--and sanctions fray at first and likely fall apart over time and Iran gets everything it wants. It gets its nuclear program and it gets sanctions relief. What a catastrophic outcome that would be.
But as bad as that reality would be, it actually gets worse. We know the hardliners have been marginalized as a result of this deal, and the moderates, which I admit is, frankly, a relative term inside Iran, are gaining power. Rejection of this deal would just be a gift to hardliners and would likely lead to Ruhani being replaced by a Revolutionary Guard proxy who would lead Iran down a path that is even more dangerous--hard to believe--than the path they are on today.
Lastly, the United States would just become an international pariah. With all of our partners at the negotiating table, almost every nation around the world supporting this agreement, what would it say if the U.S. Congress walked away? Our power as a nation would be irreparably damaged.
Now, I heard Senator Cruz on the floor earlier today chastising Democrats, yelling at us, about how could we live with ourselves doing a deal with our mortal enemy Iran. So let me ask him and others who oppose this agreement, with the rhetoric that he uses, a question in return: How could opponents of this deal live with themselves if a rejection of this deal would result in, No. 1, Iran restarting its nuclear program; No. 2, sanctions dramatically weakening; No. 3, inspections ending; and, No. 4, hard-liners being in power inside Iran?
The fact is that many Republicans opposed this agreement before they read it. Senator Cruz opposed it within an hour of its announcement. So I don't know how some opponents of this deal can live with themselves having made a political decision to oppose the most important diplomatic agreement that most of us will vote on during our time here.
This is not a perfect deal, but no diplomatic agreement ever is. Peace, as the great Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin told us, is never easy. History almost always judges that it is worthwhile.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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