Motion To Instruct Conferees On H.R. 2194, Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

Mr. NADLER of New York. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, we all know that the prospect of an Iranian state armed with nuclear weapons is simply intolerable for the world. It poses an existential threat to our ally Israel. It would pose the threat of terrorism all over the Middle East under a nuclear umbrella, so we wouldn't be able to oppose what Iran was doing. It poses a threat of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. It poses the threat that we cannot rule out that this regime would give a nuclear weapon to a terrorist group like al Qaeda to use we can only guess where.

Finally, some people say, you know, we coexisted with a nuclear Soviet Union for 40 years, 50 years. We deterred them, deterrence works. Deterrence cannot work when you have a government that is religious in nature, many of whose elements are millenarian; that is, they believe that the final destruction of Israel even if it causes a nuclear war would bring on the return of the Hidden Imam more quickly. You cannot reason with a suicide bomber. You cannot deter a suicide bomber, which is in essence what parts of the Iranian Government are.

So we must prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. We also must avoid the Hobson's choice of having a situation where the advisers come in to the President and say, Mr. President, here are your two choices: One, do nothing in Iran, who will have nuclear weapons in a couple of weeks; two, militarily attack Iran. We don't want that Hobson's choice. We have to avoid a choice of military action or a nuclear Iran.

The Bush administration was here for 8 years. They pursued a policy of talk tough and carry a toothpick. They talked tough but stopped nothing, and for 8 years the centrifuges increased and increased in number and went round and round and came closer and closer to a nuclear Iran.

Now we have an administration that comes in with a policy of big sticks and big carrots and says first we will engage the Iranians. We will show them the advantages of avoiding a nuclear status, and we will by so doing establish the foundation for unified, not unilateral, sanctions action against Iran if necessary.

Now we've reached the stage where we have to start engaging in real sanctions, and we have allies, and we will get those sanctions, and we must take tough sanctions to avoid that Hobson's choice.

And this resolution before us is part of that, to impose tough sanctions on the Iranians to make them reconsider, or to make it impossible for them to develop nuclear weapons.

So we must establish this now. We must pass this resolution because we do not want a Hobson's choice of military action or a nuclear Iran, the latter of which is intolerable, and the first of which is something we should not ever want.

So I urge my colleagues to pass this resolution, and I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Berman) and the gentlelady from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen) for bringing it to the floor.

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