Executive Session

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I think we should be honest with ourselves and the people around the world and present the reality of what Iran is today.

Iran pursues a host of dangerous activities around the world that threaten the United States, its interests, and its allies. It is fomenting a proxy war in Yemen. It supports Hezbollah and Hamas. It appears to be using its foothold in Syria to test Israel's defenses. And in tragic irony, Iran supports the Syrian butcher Bashar al-Assad, who has stooped to using chemical weapons and barrel bombs to kill his own people. How a regime like the Iranian regime--whose own people suffered under heinous chemical attacks from Iran during the Iran-Iraq War--can stand behind Assad and Syria is incredible.

Having said that, we entered into an agreement with Iran to stop them from developing a nuclear weapon. Despite all these other challenges and all the differences we continue to have with Iran, we said that-- gathering together with allies around the world--we wanted to make certain that Iran did not develop a nuclear weapon. There were lengthy negotiations and agreements, which led to the nuclear agreement with Iran to stop its development of nuclear weapons. I think it was a critically important step forward because Iran with a nuclear weapon would be a danger not only to Israel and the Middle East but also to the world.

It was that agreement which I supported and which was overwhelmingly supported by Democrats in the Senate when President Obama negotiated it. The Republicans opposed it. The candidate for President on the Republican side, Mr. Trump, said that it was a terrible agreement, and he thought we should never have entered into it. He had all sorts of derogatory things to say about the Iran nuclear agreement. But the fact is, that agreement went in place and was implemented. International inspectors were sent into Iran. Those inspectors enforced that agreement and have reported to the United States--and personally to Members of the Senate, including me--repeatedly that Iran is complying with the terms of this agreement and is not developing a nuclear weapon. For all of the differences we have with Iran, the facts and the evidence are clear: They were living up to the terms of the nuclear agreement so that they would not develop a nuclear weapon and threaten Israel and that region of the world.

Despite the progress made by this agreement, today President Trump announced his decision to halt the waiver of sanctions related to Iran and the nuclear agreement--in essence, to step away from the agreement and to say that the United States will no longer be party to it. That nuclear agreement with Iran removed the threat of nuclear weapons being used to pursue destabilizing Iranian activities. Just imagine how hard and difficult it would be to push back on Iranian aggression if, in fact, they had a nuclear weapon. The purpose of the agreement was to avoid that possibility--the very agreement President Trump walked away from today.

Because of this agreement, Iran's nuclear weapon program has been stopped in its tracks. In fact, you have to go back over 10 years to find any plans being made in Iran in the past to even consider it. The agreement was working. International inspectors have unprecedented access to Iran to watch for cheating. Iran does not have a nuclear weapon or a quick breakout ability to make one. These are real accomplishments toward world peace.

We live in a dangerous world. President Trump's decision today will make it more dangerous. By eliminating U.S. participation in this agreement to stop the development of nuclear weapons in Iran, we run the real possibility that terrible things will follow--terrible things that will cost human life and cause even more misery around this world.

Let's be clear. That agreement clearly states that ``Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop, or acquire any nuclear weapons.'' That is an unequivocal statement. And to ensure that Iran never does, the agreement provided for ongoing inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. They weren't just inspecting the obvious places; they were inspecting the entire supply chain that Iran would have to turn to to develop a nuclear weapon.

Ernest Moniz was Secretary of Energy under President Obama. He is a physicist by training. He has received global recognition for his expertise. He sat at the table because he knows what it takes to develop a nuclear weapon. He put into this agreement which President Trump is walking away from today the kind of access for inspection that gives us the assurance that Iran cannot cheat, and if they tried, we would catch them.

Anyone arguing that Iran is allowed to build a nuclear bomb under this agreement after a certain period is simply wrong and misleading the American people. I have met with IAEA Director General Amano several times. Each time, I was very blunt and direct with him: Tell me what your experience has been in Iran. Tell me, if your inspectors wanted to go through a certain door, inspect a certain installation, go inside a certain facility, were they stopped by Iran?

He told me: If we were stopped and protested, they opened the door. We have never had a failure of access.

That is what he told me repeatedly, over and over again. He said the same thing to Democratic Senators he spoke with--that Iran was in compliance with the nuclear agreement and that IAEA inspectors were able to resolve any areas. Where they contested and said ``We should have access,'' they were given access.

I hope President Trump will actually read this agreement. I wish he had sat down and spent a few minutes with Inspector Amano before making this fateful decision today. I know it is probably good political theater for some to blast any international agreement or related effort that was taken up by President Obama, but let me remind my colleagues of other negotiations undertaken with troubling regimes that served our national security interest.

It was President John Kennedy who negotiated with the Soviets during the Cuban missile crisis, bringing us back from the brink of nuclear war.

It was President Richard Nixon who negotiated with the Chinese on normalizing relations, even while that Communist regime was providing weapons to the North Vietnamese who were fighting our soldiers.

Of course, who can forget that it was President Ronald Reagan who negotiated with the Soviets while that Communist nation had thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at the United States of America? They were occupying Eastern Europe, and they were supporting troubling regimes around the world. Yet President Reagan sat down and negotiated with them.

Let's recall how many on the right of the political spectrum savaged President Reagan for negotiating with the Soviets on nuclear arms reduction. Let me read an excerpt from the January 17, 1988, New York Times about the opposition President Ronald Reagan faced in negotiating an arms agreement with the Soviets--criticism eerily familiar to what we have been hearing today from President Trump. Here is what they said about President Reagan:

Already, right-wing groups . . . have mounted a strong campaign against the INF treaty. They mailed out close to 300,000 letters opposing it. They have circulated 5,000 cassette recordings of Gen. Bernard Rogers, former Supreme Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, attacking it. And finally, they are preparing to run newspaper ads this month savaging Reagan as a new Neville Chamberlain, signing an accord with Hitler--

Of his day-- and gullibly predicting ``peace for our time.''

The conservative National Review's May 22, 1987, edition had a cover titled ``Reagan's Suicide Pact.''

While opposed by some at the time, I doubt few in this Chamber on either side of the aisle would look back today and say that President Reagan's negotiations with the Soviets and the eventual agreement weren't in the best interest of America's national security.

So here we are today with President Trump plunging us and our allies into uncertainty when it comes to an Iranian nuclear weapon and the credibility of America's word around the world. It is not very good timing if we seriously hope to bring peace to the Korean Peninsula by putting the American signature and name on the line in a negotiation to stop the development of nuclear weapons in that area of the world.

What will President Trump do if Iran restarts its nuclear weapon program? Is he prepared to face the prospects of another war in the Middle East--a war with nuclear weapons? Certainly we will have no inspectors there anymore if President Trump has his way, and that can only set us back and open the door to the possibility of a nuclear Iran in the future. Does that make America safer? Does that make the world safer? Of course not. Is this just about undoing what President Obama did, keeping some campaign promise, which, frankly, doesn't serve the best interest of peace in the world or our own national security.

Mr. Trump and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who support this move and are unwilling to speak against it, the situation being created by walking away from the nuclear agreement with Iran is now in your hands, on your watch. I hope something good can come from this.

By all accounts, the American people overwhelmingly oppose what President Trump did today. The American people know we live in a dangerous world. They have heard over and over again about the prospects of a nuclear attack from North Korea. The notion that Iran would now develop a nuclear weapon does not make America feel any safer, and by a margin of 2 to 1, they tell President Trump: What you announced today was wrong. It does not make us any safer.

There have been many opportunities in this country to work together on a bipartisan basis on foreign policy. Historically, that was almost always the case--as it should be. Sadly, those days are behind us. Instead, now it is straight partisanship. If President Obama wanted it, President Trump happens to oppose it.

Look at the decision on the Paris climate agreement. That was an agreement reached by every nation in the world, and President Trump stepped away from it, saying: When it comes to climate change, the United States does not want to engage in this global conversation.

When it came to healthcare in the United States, President Trump said: I want to eliminate ObamaCare--eliminate the Affordable Care Act. Across the United States, we are now seeing dramatic increases in health insurance premiums because of President Trump's decision and the opposition by Members of Congress on the Republican side against the Affordable Care Act.

Now we are walking into a new territory. It is not just climate change; it is not healthcare; it is the safety of this world. It is a question about whether another nation will join the nuclear club--a nation we have plenty of differences with.

We had an agreement, a good one. It was brokered by a group of nations that were unlikely allies: China, Russia, Western European nations, and the United States. Of course, that is an unusual grouping, but they all agreed Iran should not have a nuclear weapon, and we moved forward with an agreement that was working until this President, just 2 hours ago, came before the American people and said the United States is walking away from that agreement.

Sadly, it is a reckless decision. It is a historic, tragic, and reckless decision, which runs the risk of allowing this country, Iran, to develop a nuclear weapon, threaten the region, and threaten the world. We live in a dangerous world, and we need a President who understands that.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source