Cancellation of Iran Classified Briefing

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHNEIDER. Mr. Speaker, what are you and the President afraid of? What are you hiding? You and the administration are shirking your duty to provide Members of Congress a timely and complete classified briefing about Saturday's U.S. strike on Iran, on the intelligence that justified it, on the legal justification, on the objectives, and on the consequences.

Mr. Speaker, we should not have to remind you that the Constitution gives only Congress, not the President, the exclusive power to declare war. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 requires the President, after taking military action, to provide to Congress the information it needs ``in the fulfillment of its constitutional responsibilities with respect to committing the Nation to war and to the use of United States Armed Forces abroad.''

Yesterday, all Members of this House, Republicans and Democrats, were to receive an already overdue classified briefing from administration officials. However, moments before the briefing was scheduled to begin, you and the administration abruptly, without explanation, canceled it, leaving Members of Congress and the American people in the dark.

There are now reports of a leaked classified battle damage assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency that disputes what the President and the Secretary of Defense have been telling us. The American people are left wondering: Are the President and the Secretary telling the truth?

Again, I ask you, Mr. Speaker, what are you and the President afraid of? What are you trying to hide?

We are proud of the extraordinary servicemembers who put their lives on the line and perfectly executed a complex battle plan, expertly hitting their intended targets at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.

We can see from the publicly available satellite imagery that the bombs at Fordow, for example, entered the fortified mountain location exactly where intended.

The Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant is buried 300 feet below ground. We can't see inside the mountain to know with certainty whether the GBU- 57s ``obliterated'' the FFEP or not.

That is what makes the leaked report so concerning and why it is so important for the administration to give Members of Congress the full details in a classified setting.

Canceling or even delaying the briefing is completely unacceptable and a failure of your duties and responsibilities to this body.

Mr. Speaker, the stakes could not be higher.

For more than 40 years, Iran has threatened its neighbors, threatened Israel, the United States, and the world. Under the Ayatollahs, Iran has been the largest state sponsor of terror in the world. It has financed, trained, and directed Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic jihad, and the Houthis. For the last 30 years, Iran has marched forward in the pursuit of nuclear weapons, all while chanting: ``Death to Israel, death to America.''

Let me state the obvious: Iran must never be allowed to have nuclear weapons, ever.

President Trump's decision to unilaterally withdraw from the JCPOA in 2018 enabled Iran to advance forward in its nuclear program to the point that the regime was weeks, if not days, from having sufficient enriched uranium for multiple nuclear bombs.

Some have assessed that Iran could have built up to 10 nuclear bombs within a few months or even a few weeks. The worry, after the IAEA report issued 2 weeks ago declaring Iran was no longer in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, was that the regime may have decided to do exactly that.

I just returned from visiting Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates with colleagues, both Democrat and Republican. All these countries recognize that a nuclear-armed Iran poses an existential threat to their futures, and of course to Israel, as well as the United States and Europe, so I support the U.S. efforts to stop Iran's march to a nuclear weapon.

However, we cannot permanently end Iran's nuclear programs without a negotiated agreement, without inspectors on the ground, without Iran agreeing to reverse course. We must permanently block every path to a nuclear weapon that Iran might have.

The 12-day war over the skies of Iran and Israel has certainly weakened Iran's program, but we don't know without a classified briefing if it has obliterated it, if it has defeated it.

In fact, we don't know the full extent of the damage to the program. How much of the more than 600 kilograms of highly enriched uranium was Iran able to hide? How many centrifuges remain intact and operational? How easily can Iran replace the nuclear scientists eliminated by Israel? Was Fordow, as claimed, obliterated, or slightly damaged and easily repaired?

Again, Mr. Speaker, we didn't get the briefing. This is unacceptable.

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