Iran

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, yesterday, at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, some of our colleagues suggested that the United States started a war against Iran 92 days ago. I believe the facts are to the contrary. Iran started a war against the United States and our ally Israel in 1979 from the date of the Iranian Revolution.

This is the backdrop to President Trump's military campaign known as Operation Epic Fury. While the operation has formally concluded--and there is ostensibly a cease-fire--there doesn't seem to be a resolution of the conflict to be sure. Meanwhile, there has been a block in the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world's energy supplies flow ordinarily. At the same time, the Iranian economy is collapsing.

Operation Epic Fury built on the success of last summer's Operation Midnight Hammer, which targeted three nuclear facilities--successfully eliminating top nuclear scientists--and it concluded within 12 days.

Negotiations, of course, are ongoing to address the underlying issues between Iran and the United States and Israel, particularly Iran's nuclear program that led to this conflict in the first place. And it remains to be seen if a permanent, durable resolution is possible.

Now, bizarrely, Democrats have almost universally criticized President Trump's actions toward Iran, and there has been a great deal of pressure on the administration to bring these negotiations to a close under any terms.

But ever since Bill Clinton was President, Republicans and Democratic Presidents alike have warned us about the risk of a nuclear Iran. And President Trump, to his credit, was in charge when we finally did something decisive about it.

But in order to assess how these ongoing hostilities should end, it is worth taking a step backward and remembering why we started down this path in the first place.

The ostensible purpose of Operation Epic Fury--building on Operation Midnight Hammer last summer--was always to prevent the Islamic regime from acquiring a nuclear weapon and to stop them from continuing to enrich uranium, as President Trump pointed out last year--that remains the goal--and to dismantle their ability to enrich uranium in the future, I might add.

The President has made very clear that he does not want Iran to ever get a nuclear weapon, and in a normal world, you would think there would be unanimous agreement among Republicans and Democrats.

Well, I agree with President Trump's position, and I hope we stay the course and complete the job that we started. Last summer, he summarized the situation well, and this is the quote: You can't have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon.

That remains our ultimate objective: peace. But if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, we will not have peace. We will have a ticking nuclear time bomb. Yesterday, in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, our former colleague Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the existential threat that Iran's possession of a nuclear weapon would create.

He said: If Iran ever acquired a nuclear weapon, they would be able to hold the world hostage. They would hyperscale their efforts of global terrorism and completely try to drive us out of the region and ultimately destroy the State of Israel. And you wouldn't be able to do anything about it--he said--because they would have a nuclear weapon and would threaten to blow people up if you tried to move against them.

The radical regime of Iran is the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism, and they have made it abundantly clear to the United States and to the world that they cannot be trusted. They support, of course, terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah, al-Qaida, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis.

Recall that Iran provided materiel support for attacks on American soil in the runup to September 11, 2001. They backed and sometimes directly carried out attacks on Americans over multiple decades in the Middle East. They funded and trained Hamas terrorists who murdered more than 1,200 innocent men, women, and children, including 46 Americans, on October 7, 2023. Closer to home, Iran is also actively financing drug trafficking activities in Central America and is using the proceeds from this illicit commerce to continue funding their terror activities around the world.

Once Iran achieves a nuclear weapon, they will have complete leverage over the Strait of Hormuz. They can continue to fund terrorism around the globe, including here in the Western Hemisphere. The President's actions against the Islamic Republic of Iran demonstrate his understanding and appreciation of the danger that a nuclear Iran would pose to America and the world.

Now, of course, if possible, we should always hope that there could be productive negotiations and a cease-fire, but it has to be verifiable. We have to achieve the goals that the President has set out for us, and we can't back off of that without badly botching the leverage that we have now to accomplish these goals.

Perhaps the most significant current point of contention is that Iran has, of course, effectively, closed the Strait of Hormuz in attempting to choke off the global energy supply, leading to higher gas prices here at home. Treasury Secretary Bessent has acknowledged that, if the strait is not opened, a global financial crisis could ensue. At the same time--and as a checkmate--the United States has blockaded Iranian ships as well, which has proven to be extremely effective and has created enormous leverage for the United States and our allies.

The Iranian economy is in very bad shape and is in desperate need of relief. Again, this is another part of the maximum leverage campaign that the President started years ago. Given this, they have, obviously, proposed--the Iranian regime that is--that the United States unfreeze its assets and deliver sanctions relief as part of any negotiated deal.

Reporting from Reuters noted just a few days ago that Iran is ``pushing for a limited interim agreement with the United States in a bid to ease mounting economic pressure and stabilize the situation at home, while avoiding major concessions on its nuclear program.''

I sincerely hope we don't take the bait. Agreeing to these demands would be a grave miscalculation. If the United States were to give Iran billions of dollars in sanctions relief in exchange for reopening the strait, there is no doubt the money would be put to nefarious purposes. Plus, there is no promise or no guarantee they won't simply close it again in order to extract more concessions in the future.

If we remove the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports and passage through Iranian waters without eliminating their nuclear program and the highly enriched uranium as well as their capacity to enrich in the future, then we forfeit a key point of leverage against the regime, and we will have failed to accomplish our goals in defanging the regime.

Operation Epic Fury and the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports has been extremely successful in reducing the threat posed by the Iranian regime. More than 13,000 targets have been struck, including Iranian ballistic missile sites, ballistic missile and drone manufacturing facilities, weapons production and storage bunkers, and surface-to-air missile facilities. Iran has lost many of its missile launchers, and missile attacks have fallen by 90 percent. More than 150 Iranian Navy vessels have been damaged or destroyed.

As these negotiations for a resolution to this conflict proceed toward their conclusion, it is important that we keep a couple of things in mind.

First, we must resist the temptation to declare this war has been futile or unsuccessful. We are not done yet. Weakening the world's No. 1 state sponsor of terror and removing its ability to acquire nuclear weapons will make the world a safer place.

Second, we must remember why the United States and Israel took such decisive actions in the first place, and we have to make sure the job is finished in such a way that it will provide for a lasting resolution and lasting peace.

I know there is a lot of pressure on President Trump and this administration to end the conflict as soon as possible on any terms, but that would be a serious mistake.

I believe President Reagan aptly captured this point in an address he gave to Congress after a summit with the Soviet Union, when he said:

We know that peace is not just the absence of war. We don't want a phony peace or a frail peace. We didn't go in pursuit of some kind of illusory detente. We can't be satisfied with cosmetic improvements that won't stand the test of time. We want real peace.

I hope President Trump will not waste this once-in-a-generation opportunity to end Iran's nuclear program, to recover the enriched uranium and eliminate their capacity to enrich in the future, and to force the opening--reopening--of the Strait of Hormuz and make it impossible for the regime to continue to hold the world hostage.

I hope President Trump will stay strong in pursuit of these objectives and that, if the Iranian regime will not yet agree to those in a verifiable manner, then I hope the President will use his authority as Commander in Chief to do so and force them to the negotiating table on terms that we insist on, not on what they demand.

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