Housing for the 21st Century Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. RICKETTS. Mr. President, I rise today to honor and remember a great Nebraskan. Noah Tietjens was killed by the Islamic Republic of Iran in Operation Epic Fury.

As a young man, he joined the military to protect and serve our Nation, and he gave his last full measure of devotion after serving nearly two decades in protecting our country.

I mourn for him with my fellow Nebraskans, and I ask my fellow Nebraskans and all here to pray for Shelly, his wife; Dylan, his son; and for the five other Americans who were killed in Operation Epic Fury. They are truly great Americans who are protecting our Nation. Moment of Silence

Mr. President, I ask for a moment of silence to remember them.

(Moment of silence.) Iran

Mr. President, the Islamic Republic of Iran is a terrorist nation. Nearly 50 years ago, they started this reign of terror by storming our Embassy and kidnapping our diplomats, and they have been chanting ``Death to America'' ever since. They have been responsible, as the leading sponsor of state terrorism, for terrorist attacks all around the world. It has led to the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans.

When we had American troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, 2,000 were killed by IEDs, and we know that Iran funded these weapons.

We know that they have had plots to assassinate our President and other officials in our own country--on American soil. We know that they have funded the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah; that they have bombed our friends and killed civilians. And when their own people protest their terrible policies, they kill the protesters--their own people--by the thousands.

We cannot let a nation that embraces terror in the way Iran does have a nuclear weapon. This has, again, been the policy of Presidents, as the administrations have changed--that Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.

Thus, we come to the reason for Operation Epic Fury.

Iran had been in negotiations with numerous administrations and had always refused to give up their nuclear ambitions. This administration has decided that enough is enough. The goal is to make sure Iran cannot threaten us or their neighbors.

So we are targeting the things that they could use to do that--their missiles, their missile launchers, their missile stockpiles, their ability to manufacture those missiles that they are using right now to attack their neighbors. We are attacking their navy so their navy cannot threaten the shipping that goes through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz and to make sure they cannot mine it to shut this down. Ultimately, we will continue to go after their nuclear facilities that they stubbornly refuse to give up. We will go after them.

We have learned the lessons from North Korea that, once a nation has nuclear weapons and a missile system, they are not going back. Iran can already reach allies of ours right now with their ballistic missiles. We know they want to continue to develop those to reach Europe and then, ultimately, the United States.

A country that chants ``Death to America'' and has a nuclear weapon and a missile that can reach us is a danger to our people. This can never be allowed to happen. That is why we have to destroy their ability to threaten us and their neighbors, right now, before it gets out of control. If we wait too long, we may not be able to stop it.

Thank you to our brave women and men in uniform who are carrying out this operation, who are risking themselves to keep our country safe.

I ask for the prayers of the Nation for all of our members of the military and to remember their families, who serve alongside them, and to continue to mourn our dead who have died defending our Nation.

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