Hire More Heroes Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I will be brief. I know the Senator from Tennessee would like to close on this matter.

I think everything that needs to be said about the details of this deal has already been said. I do want to be recorded for history's purposes, although I know what is going to happen in regards to this if it goes through. Iran will immediately use the money in sanctions relief to begin building up its conventional capabilities. It will establish the most dominant military power in the region outside of the United States, and it will raise the price of us operating in the region. They are going to build anti-access capabilities, rockets capable of destroying our aircraft carriers and ships, continue to build these swift boats, these fast boats that are able to swarm our naval assets so that it will make it harder and harder for U.S. troops to be in the region. They will also work with other terrorist groups in the region to target American service men and women. They may or may not deny that they are involved, but they will target us and raise the price of our presence in the Middle East until they hope to completely pull us out of that region. They will also continue to build long-range missiles capable of reaching the United States. Those are not affected by this deal, and they will continue to build them as they have been doing.

Then, at some point in the near future, when the time is right, they will build a nuclear weapon, and they will do so because at that point they will know that they have become immune, that we will no longer be able to strike their nuclear program, because the price of doing so will be too high.

This is not just the work of imagination; it exists in the world today. It is called North Korea, where a lunatic possesses dozens of nuclear weapons and a long-range rocket that can already reach the United States, and we cannot do anything about it. An attack on North Korea today would result in an attack on Tokyo or Seoul or Guam or Hawaii or California. So the world must now live with a lunatic in possession of nuclear weapons.

This is the goal Iran has as well--to reach a point where they become immune to any sort of credible military threat because the price of a military strike would be too high, and then they become an established nuclear weapons power. Never in the history of the world has such a regime ever possessed weapons so capable of destruction.

Iran is led by a supreme leader who is a radical Shia cleric with an apocalyptic vision of the future. He is not a traditional geopolitical actor who makes decisions on the basis of borders or simply history or because of ambition. He has a religious apocalyptic vision of the future--one that calls for triggering a conflict between the non-Muslim world and the Muslim world, one that he feels especially obligated to trigger. And he is going to possess nuclear weapons? This is the world that we are on the verge of leaving our children to inherit and perhaps we ourselves will have to share in.

So I want to be recorded for history's purposes if nothing else to say that those of us who opposed this deal understood where it would lead, and we are making a terrible mistake. I fear that the passage of this deal will make it even harder for us to prevent it. I hope there is still time to change our minds.

But here is the good news. Iran may have a Supreme Leader, but America does not. In this Nation, we have a republic, and soon we will have new leaders, perhaps in this chamber but also in the executive branch. I pray on their first day in office they will reverse this deal and reimpose the sanctions and back them up with a credible threat of military force, or history will condemn us for not doing what needed to be done in the world's history.

I yield the floor.

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