The Israeli Prime Minister's Address To Congress

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, later this morning, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will deliver an important address to Congress. Members of both parties extend a warm welcome to him.

This leader is a great friend of our country, and his visit comes at a critical moment in the relations between our countries.

The Prime Minister's address coincides with an increasingly aggressive Iranian campaign to expand its sphere of influence across the Middle East. It represents a threat to both of our countries, it represents a threat to moderate Sunni allies, and it represents a threat to the international community at large.

That is why Prime Minister Netanyahu is here today. He is ideally suited to explain the multitude of challenges this presents--including the threat of an Iran with nuclear weapons capability--and how our countries can address them jointly.

So we are glad the Prime Minister is here with us today. We will be listening closely to what he has to say.

I hope the Obama administration will be listening, too, because this visit isn't about personalities, it is about doing what is best for both of our countries, and here some context is important.

As it has been since its founding, Israel is in a constant state of existential crisis. It is continuously threatened by terrorists, such as Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who work every day to see a democratic Israel destroyed. Israel's leaders wake every morning knowing that with just one wrong decision, it could be their last in an open and tolerant democracy. That is the frame through which the Israelis approach their national security policy.

Here is the frame the Obama administration uses: It formulates policy with two objectives in mind--fulfilling political campaign promises made back in 2008 and pursuing politically expedient solutions to whatever stands in the way of the first objective. We can see the basis for tension right there.

For me, there are two bookends that define President Obama's foreign policy.

The Executive orders that attempted to close Guantanamo without a credible plan for what to do with its detainees, and to essentially end our ability to capture, detain, and interrogate terrorists, regardless of the threats that remain for our country, represent one bookend.

The President's push to withdraw all combat forces from Iraq and Afghanistan by the end of his term, regardless of the threats posed by the Taliban or the senior leadership of Al Qaeda, represents the other bookend.

The politics-above-policy approach mystifies allies such as Israel. You can see it in many other decisions too--for instance, the President's failure to negotiate an agreement with Iraq for a residual military force that may have prevented the assault by ISIL. Instead, as threats from Al Qaeda and affiliated groups metastasized, the President focused on unwinding or reversing past policies through Executive order. Uprisings in North Africa and the broader Middle East resulted in additional ungoverned space in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. The capital of Yemen is now occupied by the Houthi militia, and the Yemenis are no more ready to detain the terrorists at Guantanamo today than they were in 2009.

What has the President's response to all this been? To draw down our conventional forces and capabilities.

Even as China and Russia have grown more belligerent, the President sees no need to reverse the harmful damage of the defense cuts he has insisted upon. He sees no need to rebuild our conventional and nuclear forces.

He sees no need to accept that leaving behind residual forces in Iraq and Afghanistan represents an effective means by which to preserve the strategic gains we have made over the years, through tremendous sacrifice.

The President has always assumed the role of Commander in Chief with great reluctance. That is particularly true of his dealings with Iran. For years, Iran has continued to enrich uranium. For years, Iran has refused to come clean to the IAEA. But ending Iran's nuclear weapons program has never fit neatly between the administration's policy bookends.

The President believed he could extend a hand of friendship and bring the Supreme Leader to the table. Even though that approach failed, the President now seems determined to conclude an agreement with Iran that would leave it with a threshold nuclear capability. It is an agreement that could allow Iran to retain thousands of centrifuges, master the nuclear fuel cycle, advance ballistic missile research and testing, and keep secret any possible military dimensions of nuclear development that have already occurred.

The administration has pursued these negotiations not as part of an overall strategy to end Iran's nuclear program, but as a stand-alone matter of litigation where a settlement must be reached. This negotiation should not be about getting the best deal that the Iranians will agree to, it should be about the strategic objective of ending Iran's nuclear weapons program. To do this, the administration must be committed to using force if negotiations fail.

The strategic ambiguity of leaving ``all options on the table'' has never been convincing, and the administration refused to work with Congress on developing a sanctions and declaratory military response should negotiations fail. It is unlikely that this Congress could be convinced to lift sanctions absent a complete disclosure on the part of the Iranians of all previous research conducted in pursuit of a nuclear device.

And this gets back to the differences between the perspective of the Israeli government concerning Iran's nuclear capability and those of the Obama administration.

Iran is pursuing full spectrum warfighting capabilities to wage war against Israel, the United States, and our Sunni allies in the region.

Iran is developing cyber capabilities to harass and harm its adversaries, ballistic missile capabilities, and conventional capabilities to deny United States warships access to the Persian Gulf.

Iran remains a state sponsor of terror.

Tehran also continues to push ever deeper into Iraq.

In its fight within Iraq, Iran's proxy Shia militias have gained valuable combat experience on the ground to add to the terrorist tactics of employing IEDs that were perfected against United States forces. The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq not only led to the abandonment of the Sunni tribes which had allied with us in Anbar Province, it led to a greater reliance upon the Iranians by the Baghdad government.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Qods Force are expanding their command and control and combat capabilities in Iraq and Syria and gaining valuable warfighting lessons.

The Qods force and Hezbollah are mastering an expeditionary fighting capability that should concern Israel, the United States, and our Sunni allies. The Iranians are natural allies of the Houthi militias in Yemen.

Setting aside the nuclear program, from a perspective of strategy, the Iranians are advancing across the region in all other aspects of warfighting. All of this has occurred while sanctions have been in place and the price of oil has declined.

From the perspective of any Israeli Prime Minister, Iran's advances have occurred while the terrorist presence in the Sinai has grown, the Nusrah front and ISIL are present in Syria, and Libya has become a terrorist training ground.

Because the administration has all but conceded the Iranian nuclear enrichment capability, Israel has grown more isolated. It has come to understand that it may have to act alone. Yet rather than ending Iran's nuclear weapons program, President Obama's objective seems to be to defer any decision about the use of force to one of his successors. That may be politically expedient, but it is inconsistent with the national security requirements of Israel.

I say all this to underline the importance of the Prime Minister's address this morning.

We have seen the results of a politics-above-all foreign policy now for several years: It leaves our Nation strategically weaker, and will make challenges faced by the President's successor all the more difficult.

Israel has seen this too. Israel knows it may well be the first to suffer if the Obama White House makes another flawed political decision, but Americans should understand it is not just Israel that needs to worry. We should be concerned by a nuclear Iran. The whole world should be concerned by a nuclear Iran, and the Prime Minister is going to help explain why that is. For Israel's sake and ours, I for one am very glad he is.

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