Providing for Congressional Disapproval of A Rule Submitted By the Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency--Veto--
Floor Speech
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Mr. COONS. Mr. President, 6 months ago, world powers reached an agreement to constrain Iran's nuclear program and to give us a path forward toward constraining Iran's nuclear ambitions. While the international community has taken some positive steps to implement this agreement and to limit Iran's nuclear program and while Iran has recently taken positive steps to observe and to implement this agreement, we must do much more to strictly enforce this deal and aggressively push back on Iran's bad behavior outside the deal's parameters. If we don't, this nuclear agreement may not survive into next year.
This past weekend was an eventful one for U.S. foreign policy and, in particular, for U.S. policy toward Iran. Saturday marked implementation day of this nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.
Implementation day is important because it means that the International Atomic Energy Agency, or the IAEA, has certified that Iran has completed a whole series of tasks required as part of the nuclear agreement. The four most important of those tasks are these:
First, it has shipped 12 tons of enriched uranium--nearly its entire stockpile, which took Iran a decade to amass--out of the country to a secure facility supervised by the IAEA around the clock.
Second, it means Iran has reduced the number of its functioning centrifuges--centrifuges it uses to enrich uranium--by nearly two- thirds, or from roughly 19,000 to a little more than 6,000, and it has accepted long-term limits on developing, testing, and deploying new centrifuges.
Third, it means that Iran has presented the IAEA with unprecedented 24/7 access to monitor all of its nuclear-related facilities. That is not only enrichment facilities. That is uranium mines, uranium mills, and centrifuge production facilities--every known and declared site within Iran connected to its nuclear program. This level of access far exceeds previous IAEA authorities in countries suspected of trying to develop a nuclear weapon.
Fourth--and to me, in ways most importantly--Iran has filled the core of its Arak heavy water reactor, pictured here, with concrete, permanently disabling the most likely short-term path that Iran had to producing weapons-grade plutonium. Had Iran proceeded and had Iran been able to produce significant quantities of weapons-grade plutonium, our ability to intervene and to prevent their march toward a nuclear weapon would have been significantly harder.
Plutonium is one of the most lethal toxic substances known to man, and any attack on a heavy water reactor producing plutonium would have had horrible consequences, not just in Iran but throughout the entire region. So blocking Iran's short-term pathway through uranium enrichment and through plutonium enrichment is a significant step forward and does reflect significant restraints on Iran's nuclear weapons program.
As a result of the conditions on this deal that I just referenced, the time it would take Tehran to break out and to dash toward a nuclear weapon, to amass all of the fissile material needed for a bomb has been extended significantly from just 2 months to 3 months to a year or more. But these positive developments come with substantial risks, principally among them is the tens of billions of dollars in sanctions relief that Iran will now receive for complying with the terms of the deal. Tens of billions of dollars of Iranian assets, which have long been frozen in bank accounts around the world through an American-led international sanctions effort will now be released.
That is why America and our international partners must continue to aggressively enforce the terms of the deal and to make sure that Iran remains in compliance with every aspect of the JCPOA. Our work in this area is more urgent and more difficult than it has been at any point before. We can be confident that in the coming months and years the Iranians will test the boundaries of the deal and will probe our every response. Indeed, they already have.
If we fail to respond more swiftly and more vigorously to these Iranian provocations, Iran will nibble away at the deal's restrictions and gradually undermine the international coalition that put it together. Every minor violation that we permit, every violation that we tolerate damages our credibility and gives Iran tacit permission to continue its breaches of the agreement.
Given this stark, difficult reality, our efforts to deter Iranian aggression must not be limited to just enforcing the nuclear deal, or the JCPOA. Rather, our efforts must be part of a coherent, unified regional strategy to contain Iran and to push back on its bad behavior in the Middle East, a task made even more difficult because of its newfound access to assets previously frozen. That comprehensive effort to counter and contain Iran must include a willingness to take unilateral action by imposing new sanctions on Iran for destabilizing actions, both inside and outside the parameters of the nuclear agreement.
That brings me to the second important development of this past weekend--the designation of additional sanctions to punish Iran for its ballistic missile tests. Last fall, in clear violation of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1929, Iran conducted two ballistic missile tests: one on October 10 and one on November 21. Since then, I and many of my colleagues have been calling on the Obama administration to punish Iran for these disruptive, dangerous, and blatantly illegal actions. Over the weekend, the administration took action by designating for sanctions 11 additional individuals and business entities involved in supporting Iran's ballistic missile program. These sanctions follow a series of steps previously taken by the Treasury Department last fall to sanction other Iranians, other Iranian-linked individuals and organizations for a litany of other dangerous and illegal activities: supporting Hezbollah officials and agents who threaten our vital ally, Israel; supplying financial and material aid to the Houthi rebels in Yemen; providing military support for the murderous Assad regime in Syria; and the list goes on. It is important for all of us, on a bipartisan basis, to remind our allies throughout the world that American-led sanctions against Iran--for its human rights violations, for its ballistic missile program, for its support of terrorism--remain in effect and will be vigorously enforced.
From conducting these missile tests to supporting terrorism, to continuing to deny the very existence of some basic human rights, Iran has shown time and again it will continue to flout international rules and values. The United States must continue to maintain its unilateral sanctions in these areas, and we must not hesitate to use these authorities--not just to punish Iran for its immediate bad behavior but to send a clear signal to our allies in the region, throughout the world, and to Tehran that we are serious about holding Iran accountable.
Of course, implementation day and the imposition of sanctions and sanction designations for Iran's illegal ballistic missile tests weren't the only significant developments of the new year. We also learned this weekend that America would soon be able to welcome home five innocent Americans long held unlawfully by Iran. These Americans should never have been held in the first place and their release was long overdue. The negotiations to release these five Americans occurred outside the parameters of the JCPOA.
While we are grateful for their safe return, this release also raises some serious questions. We still don't know the status of retired FBI agent Robert Levinson or his whereabouts. We don't know the status of Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American energy industry executive arrested in October. It is my hope there are equally ceaseless efforts by the administration to bring them home.
We have to ask: What did we give up? What were the terms of the agreement? How did we make possible this release? A key part that is public is that while none of the 7 Iranians released were convicted of violence, they were nonetheless convicted of criminal acts, and 14 Iranians who may have been convicted had the charges against them dropped. The question we are going to have to pursue is, What precedent did these prisoner swaps set for our future interactions with the Iranian regime? It is my hope that we are at the end of prisoner deals with the Iranian regime.
We must remember, though, that despite the limits imposed by the JCPOA, Iran continues to destabilize the Middle East and undermine America's goals for the region. Iran's behavior since the JCPOA was signed has made it crystal clear that Iran is neither America's friend nor ally. We must remain suspicious and distrustful of the Iranian regime.
In addition to its ballistic missile test I referenced before, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has conducted dangerous military operations near U.S. ships, most recently threatening the safety of American sailors by conducting a live-fire exercise barely a mile from the aircraft carrier, the USS Harry S. Truman.
Iran also detained American sailors in the Arabian Gulf last week, and it did not treat them in a manner consistent with naval forces rendering assistance at sea. While I am pleased our sailors were released safely, Iran did use the images of those sailors for propaganda purposes in an attempt to send a signal to the world about its capacity to sow chaos in the region. We must not turn a blind eye to provocations of Iran in the open seas of the Persian Gulf and throughout the region. I call on the administration and on my colleagues to support significantly increased efforts at maritime interdictions in the gulf and throughout the broader region. We should conduct more joint military exercises with our valued allies and partners in the region to make it clear to Iran that we will continue to pursue our interests, and we will counter Iran's maligned activities. Again, to remain distrustful of Iran and push back on the regional ambitions I think is the only path toward a safer, stronger Middle East and an American presence as one of its regional leaders.
No one should mistake Tehran's compliance with the terms of the nuclear agreement for a broader willingness to respect human rights and engage with the international community in the rules-based order that we have helped lead since the Second World War. I have seen nothing to indicate that the regime in Tehran cares about the well-being of the Iranian people, much less the opinion of the world community. In October, for example, two Iranian poets each received 10-year sentences and 99 lashes for kissing members of the opposite sex and shaking their hands. That same month an Iranian award-winning filmmaker was sentenced to 6 years in prison and 200 lashes on the charge of insulting sanctities. The filmmaker was making a documentary about an Iranian artist, based in Europe, who had been accused of blasphemy.
Nearly two-thirds of the 12,000 candidates who applied to run in next month's parliamentary elections recently withdrew or were disqualified by Iran's Guardian Council. Iran's Supreme Leader said: ``Americans have set their eyes covetously on elections, but the great and vigilant nation of Iran will act contrary to our enemies' will, whether it be in elections or on other issues, and as before we will punch them in the mouth.'' These are not the actions or the statements of a state that respects the rights of its people or seeks friendship with the United States in the near future.
Just 2 weeks ago I returned from a trip to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, and Austria. I am grateful to my colleague from New York, Senator Gillibrand, for organizing this trip, which included important meetings with nuclear inspectors from the IAEA. We met with their leadership headquartered in Vienna and had meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Minister of Defense Ya'alon, and Turkish President Erdogan, as well as other vital regional leaders. The message my colleagues and I heard from these leaders was simple, powerful, and clear: America must reassure our allies that we will not waver in our commitment to push back on Iran, its nuclear program, and its destabilizing actions in the region. Our partners, our allies--and Iran--must know and believe through our words and our actions that we are serious about preserving the long-term stability of the Middle East and that Iran--a revolutionary regime--does not share our values or that goal.
As part of this effort, we must reassure, reaffirm, and strengthen our support for our vital ally, Israel. As the administration negotiates a new, long-term memorandum of understanding to provide Israel with the security assistance it needs to protect itself in the most dangerous neighborhood on Earth, we must insist that joint U.S. and Israeli strategic planning includes protection of Israel from threats it faces from neighboring instability in Syria. We must not allow Israel to be attacked by Iranian proxies, such as Hezbollah and Hamas. We must work closely with the Israelis to share intelligence and intercept any weapons shipments from Iran to its regional proxies.
If we fail to push back on Iran and enforce the terms of the nuclear deal, not only will the agreement collapse, but our efforts to show the world that diplomacy actually works will be dealt a dangerous blow as well.
In the weeks and months to come, I call on the administration to do more to push back on Iran, and I call on my colleagues--Republicans and Democrats alike--to come together, to be engaged, and to remain focused on enforcing the terms of this nuclear agreement, on containing Iran, and on deterring their bad behavior, their support for terrorism, their support for human rights violations, and their relentless effort to develop and advance ballistic missile capability.
As I said before on this floor, the Iranian Government has long paid close attention to everything America says and more closely to what America does. Never has it been more true than today. Never has it been more urgent than today. As the regime gains greater access to money and resources, we must not take our eye off of Iran.
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