Approval of Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCAUL. Mr. Speaker, for the last decade, Congress has passed bipartisan sanctions to get to the point where we are today, and the purpose of these sanctions was to dismantle Iran's nuclear weapons program.

This agreement does not achieve that goal. In fact, this agreement puts Iran, the world's largest state sponsor of terror, on a glidepath to a nuclear bomb. Proponents say it is the only alternative to war, but I believe that is a false choice.

I recently met with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and he agreed that our goal should be a good deal, but that we cannot put our security at risk for a bad deal. Make no mistake, this is a bad deal for America and for our allies.

It will not stop Iran's nuclear program. It will leave Iran with the ingredients for a bomb and infrastructure to build it, and it will spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. It will give Iran a cash windfall, freeing up over $100 billion to fuel the regime's global campaign of Islamist terror.

Incredibly, this agreement lifts restrictions on Iran's ballistic missiles, which the Ayatollah himself said that they will mass-produce. There is only one reason to develop an ICBM, Mr. Speaker, and that is to deliver a nuclear warhead across continents, which means the United States.

A top Iranian general bragged recently that his country will have ``a new ballistic missile test in the near future that will be a thorn in the eyes of our enemies.''

President Reagan's famous negotiating advice was to ``trust, but verify.'' We can't trust a regime that has cheated on every deal. President Rouhani says his country's centrifuges will never stop spinning and that they will ``buy, sell, and develop any weapons we need and will not ask for permission or abide by any resolution.''

Now, the White House is counting on verification measures spelled out in secret side deals between Iran and the IAEA, which Secretary Kerry testified to me that even he has not seen. Astoundingly, the AP reports that the side deal allows Iran to self-inspect its nuclear sites.

Now, the American people, through their representatives in Congress, are expected to vote on this measure without seeing these secret deals, which goes to the heart of verification. This, in my judgment, is nothing short of reckless.

Let's be clear-eyed about what we are debating. This was not a negotiation with an honest government; it was a negotiation with terrorists who chant ``death to America'' and are responsible for more than a thousand American casualties in Iraq alone. If we allow this deal to go forward, we are putting the security of the world at grave risk.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, for the sake of our Nation's security and in defense of the free world, I cannot in good conscience support this agreement.

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