Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016--Conference Report--

Floor Speech

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Mr. COONS. Mr. President, tomorrow will mark 1 year since the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, China, and Iran reached an agreement to prevent Iran from obtaining or developing a nuclear weapon. This afternoon, I intend to review where we are today 1 year after the deal--also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. I am grateful a number of my colleagues will come to the floor today as well, or are submitting statements for the Record, reviewing where we are 1 year later.

As I said 1 year ago, roughly--in September--when I ultimately decided, after long and thorough and detailed consideration, to support the agreement, those of us determined to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran have a real, enduring, and ongoing responsibility to undertake consistent and clear-eyed assessments of how this agreement fares and not just over the course of its first year but over the many years to come.

In short, in my assessment so far, this deal has done what it intended to do. Because of aggressive enforcement of the terms of the agreement, the JCPOA has cut off Iran's most likely short-term uranium and plutonium pathways to building a nuclear weapon. The time it would take for Iran to break out, to assemble enough fissile material for one nuclear weapon has extended significantly from just 2 to 3 months to well over a year.

The international community, in turn, has upheld its commitments under the deal, providing Iran with relief from nuclear-related sanctions. More importantly, the agreement has given the IAEA, or the International Atomic Energy Agency--the world's nuclear watchdog-- unprecedented searching access to oversee all of Iran's nuclear activities with intrusive inspections and round-the-clock remote monitoring.

I will review for a few more minutes all the different ways I and some of my colleagues have worked to ensure effective enforcement of this agreement.

First, as to the IAEA inspections I just mentioned. At my urging, the Senate State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee provided nearly $95 million in funding for the IAEA--a $5 million increase over the level requested by President Obama. On top of giving the IAEA greater resources, this increase, I believe, sends a strong signal to Iran and our international partners that we intend to enforce the JCPOA; that we intend to encourage voluntary contributions by our international partners to strengthen the agency and to sustain its ability to take advantage of the unique opportunities under this agreement for a searching and continuing insight into Iran's nuclear activity.

Advocating for additional U.S. support for the IAEA is just one of the steps my colleagues and I have taken over the past year to ensure the nuclear agreement is implemented effectively and enforced strictly. In a series of 15 floor speeches since December, during which I have been joined by nearly a dozen members of my caucus, I have sought to keep this agreement on our radar to ensure that Congress is effectively monitoring it and that we are relentlessly enforcing its terms.

Holding Iran accountable doesn't just mean enforcing the JCPOA. It also means pushing back on that regime's bad behavior across the Middle East--behavior that falls outside the scope of the nuclear agreement. That is why I have called for the Obama administration to strengthen its efforts to interdict Iranian arms shipments to the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and--like a police department after a successful drug bust--to then publicize that those interdictions have occurred and the weapons they have seized, demonstrating to the American people and our partners in the Middle East the full scope of Iran's destabilizing activities and our intention to keep cracking down on those activities, which is crucial to building a broad coalition that will sustainably counter Iranian aggression.

That is why I have also worked with my colleagues to provide $117 million this year for the U.S. Treasury's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, which enforces American sanctions against bad actors, including enforcing some of the very sanctions that crippled Iran's economy and forced it to the negotiating table in the first place. That funding represents a significant increase of $17 million since 2013, and I am fighting for an additional $6 million this next fiscal year.

I have also held discussions with foreign leaders, from Israel to Saudi Arabia, India, Qatar, Turkey, and Russia, about how we can work together to sustainably counter Iranian aggression. I have called on the administration to levy new sanctions against an entity affiliated with Iran's hardline Revolutionary Guard Corps, known as Mahan Air, and I will make the same demand of the next administration.

I have worked to impose penalties on Iran for its dangerous and provocative behavior, which means taking action against their destabilizing support for the murderous Assad regime in Syria and their promotion of terrorism throughout the Middle East, Iran's ongoing ballistic missile tests, and the regime's human rights abuses, from its executions of juveniles to its detention of journalists and Iranian- American citizens.

I have also joined my colleague Senator Graham in leading a letter to President Obama calling on the administration to include a strengthened 10-year MOU, or memorandum of understanding, on defense priorities with our vital ally Israel.

I am determined to continue these efforts in the months and years to come. We cannot avert our eyes from Iran's destructive behavior, even as we review what progress has been made in the year since the JCPOA.

If we are to ensure that agreement remains intact, if we are to succeed in our task of preventing Iran from developing or obtaining a nuclear weapon, Congress must play an active role. If the agreement succeeds, we should recognize those successes. If Iran falls short of the terms of the agreement, we need to make certain the international community reacts swiftly to bring Iran back into compliance.

Regardless of whether my colleagues opposed or supported this agreement a year ago, regardless of where one stood then, we all have an interest today in working together to ensure we prevent Iran from ever being able to develop a nuclear weapon. We have a responsibility then to review Iran's actions and hold them accountable through aggressive enforcement of the deal, pushing back on their bad behavior, and maintaining a credible conventional deterrent.

As my colleagues comments later today will make clear, in addition to holding Iran to the terms of the nuclear deal, we have to push back against their dangerous nonnuclear bad behavior--as I mentioned, the ballistic missile tests, human rights violations, and support for terrorism.

I know my colleagues and I remain committed to overseeing strict enforcement of the nuclear agreement with Iran and protecting the security of our allies and partners in the Middle East, especially our vital ally Israel. I also know we remain committed to showing that international engagement and multilateral diplomacy can be effective, even with rogue regimes like Iran.

These commitments are why my colleagues and I are on the floor this afternoon and evening. These commitments will continue tomorrow, as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on which I serve, holds a hearing that will review closely where we are 1 year since the JCPOA.

I thank Chairman Corker and Ranking Member Cardin for regularly holding hearings to assess the nuclear deal and for convening tomorrow's hearing, which I look forward to attending.

Our commitment to overseeing the implementation of this important agreement can and must continue for its entire duration. Even if another crisis emerges, we must remain vigilant and push for the most aggressive enforcement of this deal and not be distracted by developments in other parts of the world. That is my commitment for as long as I have the honor of representing the people of Delaware in the Senate.

I am grateful to some of my colleagues who will join me on the floor later today--Senator Carper, Senator Peters, and Senator Blumenthal. I would also like to thank the senior Senator from Pennsylvania, Mr. Casey, for his steadfast effort to support our vital ally Israel and ensure swift multilateral consequences for JCPOA violations.

In closing, let me say this. We--this body, this Congress, the people of this country--must make a clear distinction between the Iranian regime and the Iranian people. The Iran regime deserves scrutiny, condemnation, and opposition for a decades-long pattern of human rights abuses, support for terrorism, and bad behavior, but the Iranian people deserve our support in their fight for freedom, democracy, and human rights.

With that, I am hopeful we will hear soon from my good friend and fellow Delawarean, the senior Senator from our State of neighbors, who has been a leader in my State for decades. I know later this evening we will also hear on these important topics from Senators Peters and Blumenthal as well.

I am grateful to all of my colleagues who have joined me in colloquies and statements on the floor on this important topic in the past, and I just hope we can, in a sustainable and bipartisan way, insist on effective and rigorous enforcement of this deal throughout its entire term.

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