Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, Donald Trump relit the fuse that leads to an Iranian nuclear bomb by abandoning the Iran nuclear deal. Now Republicans are urging President Joe Biden to let it go boom.

President Barack Obama crafted the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon. He had inherited two quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he was right to prioritize diplomacy to prevent us from falling into a third quagmire.

Donald Trump's unilateral exit from the Iranian deal in 2013 created a nuclear crisis where one did not exist. In the years since that withdrawal, Iran has crept closer to a bomb, restricted access to international inspectors, and set us on a potential collision course to war with Iran.

Our European allies wanted to build upon the Iran nuclear deal, but President Trump and his arms control assassin, John Bolton, used it as target practice, leaving the Biden administration and our allies to pick up the pieces.

On the Republicans' watch, Iran's breakout time, or time required to build enough nuclear material for its first nuclear bomb, went from more than 1 year down to just weeks.

There is simply no good alternative to reentering the Iran nuclear deal. Trump has already tried the alternative. It has failed miserably and made the United States more vulnerable and made the Middle East more vulnerable.

Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid out a series of demands for Iran in 2018 that read more like a fantasy novel than a foreign policy speech. And where did it get us? Absolutely nowhere, except it got Iran closer to a nuclear weapon than it has ever been before.

No, the reality is that the alternative to diplomacy, our Plan B, is likely to include more sanctions which will lead to more enrichment of uranium and the prospect of another Middle East conflagration. In short, Plan B stands for ``Plan Bad.'' That is what is being urged by the Republican Party, by the Trump supporters. ``Plan Bad'' would endorse Trump's disastrous policy of ``maximum pressure,'' one that gave us maximum enrichment of uranium and other activities prohibited under the Iran nuclear deal.

Plan B means that China's reported work to give Saudi Arabia--Iran's nemesis--the building blocks for a nuclear weapon will only accelerate, and other Gulf countries will jump into the race for a nuclear bomb as well.

Plan B means that Iran's nuclear facilities that are above ground will go underground.

Plan B means that cameras and international inspectors that keep a continuous eye on Iran's facilities will be shuttered permanently, leaving us in the dark about Iran's nuclear intentions.

Under Trump, we saw ``maximum pressure'' generate ``maximum tension'' that put us on a perilous path to war. Trump's Plan B to diplomacy was and continues to be a complete failure.

Indeed, we saw this in 2019, when tensions rose to a decades-long high with the assassinations of Qasem Soleimani, followed by Iran's retaliatory strike that injured 200 U.S. troops at an Air Force base in Iraq. Never had we been closer to a war with Iran.

If the sides currently negotiating a new Iran deal are unable to get to yes on a deal, I fear that we will see increasing calls from my Republican colleagues to take military action against Iran. That is not a good option.

My Republican colleagues need to be honest with the war-weary American people that doubling down on the failed policies of the Trump era will likely lead Iran to retaliate by lobbing greater numbers of missiles at our troops or at the region's energy infrastructure. Iran will double down on these failed policies, and that may lead to Iran creating a sea wall to stop traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, creating more of a supply chain pain. And my colleagues need to be honest that doubling down on these policies risks adding to the number of Gold Star mothers who have lost children to unnecessary wars far from home. And, perhaps, most importantly, my colleagues should be honest with the American people that these failed policies have led Iran closer to a nuclear weapon--not further away from a nuclear weapon, closer to a nuclear weapon--day by day, week by week that we have followed the Trump plan.

These are life-and-death stakes. Doubling down on the failed policies of Trump and expecting a different result in Iran is truly the definition of insanity.

The Iran nuclear deal is not a panacea nor was it ever intended to be a panacea. What it is, is a verifiable agreement that cuts off each of Iran's three pathways to a nuclear bomb.

First, Iran will, again, have to cap its enrichment level and ship out its stock of enriched uranium that would otherwise be potential feedstock for a nuclear bomb.

Second, Iran will finish the conversion of its Arak reactor, which will close off its plutonium path to a nuclear bomb.

And, third, and most importantly, inspectors from the international watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, will once again get access to the soup to nuts of Iran's nuclear fuel cycle.

If we listen to the same voices who rejected a good deal in search of the impossible, who preached brinksmanship over diplomacy, we will find ourselves stuck, as we are today, with an Iran that could have the ultimate weapon to back its coercion--a nuclear bomb.

Fortunately, this screenplay does not have to end with American men and women marching off to another war in the Middle East, and it does not have to end with Iran entering the worst of exclusive clubs, those with nuclear weapons.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent nuclear saber rattling has brought home the stakes of nuclear diplomacy with Iran. A homicidal leader armed with weapons of annihilation is a threat to global peace.

When Putin ordered an increase in the alert level of Russia's nuclear forces a couple of weeks ago, he postponed U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile tests for fear that, in the fog of war, Russia could misinterpret an ICBM launch off the coast of California as a first nuclear strike against Russia. That also explains President Biden's reticence to impose a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over Ukraine.

Putin is failing. Ukraine and its people are winning, with our help. Every fabricated justification for Putin's senseless and illegal war has crumbled. But a direct U.S.-NATO military intervention would pull the world's two largest nuclear powers closer to a war. No simulation, no exercise, no war game can assure us that such a war does not metastasize to engulf all of Europe and lead to the use of nuclear weapons.

Mr. President, here is the scary reality: Vladimir Putin could kill millions upon millions of Americans right now using a fraction of his 4,500 nuclear weapons. That is the perennial threat of nuclear arms.

Conventional logic says that we are safe because a Russian nuclear strike would be both homicidal and suicidal for Putin, but we cannot bank on the fact that Putin, the pariah, has a moral basement. President George W. Bush famously said he looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes and he saw his soul. Thank goodness President Biden sees it for the dark space that it is.

As a result, Russia's war in Ukraine calls on us to challenge tired, old Cold War assumptions that basing our nuclear posture on the balance of terror and relying on the rationality of our leaders will keep the peace--no, it will not. That assumption has to be completely reanalyzed in view of what Putin is doing right now, that pursuing President Reagan's star wars fantasy to knock out nuclear-tipped missiles in space before they fall on American cities is wise; it is not. There is no guarantee that some of those nuclear weapons would not come and destroy American cities and that we should spend a quarter of a trillion dollars to replace the very same U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles that the President won't even test during a conflict due to fears of escalation; we should not.

Unfortunately, our American democracy and Russia's autocracy do share one major thing in common: Both our systems give the United States and Russian Presidents the God-like powers known as sole authority to end life on the planet as we know it by ordering a nuclear first strike.

As President Richard Nixon grimly described these powers once:

I can go into my office and pick up the telephone and in 25 minutes, 70 million people will be dead.

We know all too well that American Presidents are not infallible, neither is our early warning system, which is why we need an emergency break to ensure that a case of mistaken identity--a false missile launch--or a President gone wild does not trigger the unthinkable.

We cannot uninvent the atom, its military applications, and technological know-how. The nuclear Pandora's box is sadly forever opened. We must, however, do everything in our power to be able to look the next generation in the eye and say that we did everything-- everything--in our power to avert the unfathomable, a nuclear war on this planet; and that includes supporting negotiations that not only end Russia's war in Ukraine, but also future negotiations to end the budding 21st century nuclear arms race which is spinning out of control.

Mr. President, I was a teenager during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Had President Kennedy listened to his generals rather than to his better angels, we might not be here today. This building might not be here. ``Bert the Turtle'' public service advertisements told us to duck and cover under our school desks. Backpack nukes designed to repel the Soviet advance on West Germany rolled off the assembly lines. U.S. and Soviet leaders were awoken in the middle of the night to false alarms of nuclear Armageddon. These events must forever belong to our past, not to our future.

A future held together by the fear of annihilation is a burden, not an inspiration. But Congress can shape a safer more inspiring future by supporting President Biden's efforts to reenter a good Iran nuclear deal, and we can and we must hold ourselves to a higher standard than Russia when it comes to resting the fate of humanity in the hands of just one human being.

This is a subject that should command the attention of every single American. We have to move further away from the threat of a nuclear catastrophe, not get closer to it; and that is why we must support a reentry into a good Iran nuclear deal. The alternative is frightening for the future, not just of the Middle East, but for our country and the entire planet.

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