Iran Nuclear Deal

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by praising Mr. Garamendi, the gentleman from California, for this excellent presentation on why we should make it in America.

But I am here today to talk about something that was made in Vienna, namely, the Iran nuclear deal. I am going to start with a few observations and then get to the heart of my remarks.

The first observation is that we ought to set the record straight. The sanctions that brought Iran to the table were imposed by Congress over the objection of the executive branch of government.

For 30 years, Congress had it right, and for 30 years, the executive branch had it wrong. For 30 years, every time we passed sanctions acts, they would be argued against and thwarted and watered down due to the efforts of several administrations.

The only time Congress got it wrong is when the House of Representatives got it right and passed tough sanctions legislation that went over to the Senate where, unfortunately, some in the senior body listened to the administrations at the time and failed to pass our legislation.

The second observation I would like to make is that the deal in Vienna lifts a number of sanctions which were not imposed as a result of Iran's nuclear activity. It provides greater sanctions relief than that which was supposed to be provided.

I, in particular, note that the arms embargo against Iran, an Iran that has created so much mischief in Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere, will be phased out and the Iran Sanctions Act will be waived. The Iran Sanctions Act was passed by the Congress in the early 1990s.

A review of that bill indicates that only one of three reasons it was passed was Iran's work with WMDs. And, of course, weapons of mass destruction come in three forms, not only the nuclear, but also the chemical and the biological. So I would reckon that only one-ninth of the reason Congress passed that bill was Iran's nuclear program, and yet those sanctions are being waived.

And finally, we see that the sanctions relief is so complete that not only are we waiving our secondary sanctions and allowing Iran to do business with the rest of the world, we are even allowing Iran to export to the United States. We won't buy their oil, but we will buy the things that we don't need and they couldn't sell anywhere else.

The next observation I would like to make is that there are those who say this deal may only work for about 10 years, but the Iranian Government will get better over the next 10 years. Do not hold your breath. The whole purpose of sanctions is to put pressure on the government, which either causes it to change its policy or creates a change in regime. That is what you do when you are trying to force a change in government.

Showering this government with economic benefits is not going to lead to its destruction or its eclipse. Look at Tehran. What you see is what you get.

Another observation is about missiles. It is unfortunate that this deal will allow Iran, in 8 years, to get more missile technology. There is only one reason for them to be working on intercontinental ballistic missiles, and that is to deliver a nuclear payload to a different continent than their own--namely, ours; namely, Europe. There is no other reason. Iran is not trying to fly to the Moon. They are trying to get a nuclear device to North America or Europe.

But let us not be sanguine one way or the other about missiles. A nuclear weapon--they vary in size, but they are about the size of a person, and you can smuggle one into the United States inside a bale of marijuana.

So while we should be doing everything possible to stop Iran's missile program, the heart of our effort has got to be to stop their nuclear weapons program. The heart of my speech is to focus on the deal from a nuclear weapons perspective.

Now, the political pundits outside this Capitol are all trying to make this an ``evaluate the President'': Are you for him or are you against him? Is this a good deal? Did the President do a good job?

Those questions may be relevant to those seeking ratings on this or that cable television channel, but we in Congress have got to deal with a completely different question: What should Congress do at this time under these circumstances in the real world as it exists today where the President has agreed to sign this deal, not as it existed 2 days ago, not as it existed a decade ago when we should have been enforcing sanctions laws, but what should Congress do today?

Now, in order to reach that conclusion, we need to look at the overall deal and realize that it has different phases. It is a different deal over time. So let us look at the deal from the good, the bad, and the ugly.

In the first year, the most important good parts occur. Iran must ship 90 percent of its uranium stockpiles out of country and mothball two-thirds of the centrifuges. As we craft our policy, we should be loathe to give up those two advantages. We must, whenever we focus on anything, say, yes, there are some bad parts of this deal, but two-thirds of the centrifuges, 90 percent of the stockpiles, that is something we need to be focused on. So that is the good.

The bad also occurs in the first year. Iran will get its hands on $120 billion-plus of their own money that we have under the sanctions been able to freeze in various money centers around the world.

What will they use this $120 billion for? Part of it will go to help their own people because they have raised expectations. A good chunk of it will go to graft and corruption in the Iranian regime because it is, after all, the Iranian regime. A large portion of that money will go to kill Sunni Muslims. Some of them deserve it, most do not. And what is left over will be used to kill Americans and Israelis.

So there is bad in the first year and good in the first year.

But what is truly ugly occurs after 10 years. After year 10, Iran can have an unlimited number of centrifuges of unlimited quality. As the President himself says, at that point, their breakout time, the amount of time from the day they kick out the inspectors to the day when they have enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon, shrinks to virtually zero days for the first bomb, a few more days for the second bomb.

Why is this? Because after 10 years, Iran will be allowed to create a huge industrial facility capable of supporting several electric generation nuclear plants. It is counterintuitive, but true, that it takes an awful lot more enrichment to power a nuclear plant than to create a nuclear bomb. In effect, we will be in a situation where it is as if Iran has an industrial-sized giant bakery capable of feeding many of their cities, and all they need for a nuclear bomb is a bag full of breadcrumbs. Obviously, once they go big, once they go industrial, once we get to the ugly part of this deal, Iran is a nuclear power--perhaps not an admitted nuclear power, but a nuclear power nevertheless.

So we are faced with the good, the bad, and the ugly. But the question is: What should Congress do?

One choice before us, and it is, I hope, the choice we will take, is to consider a resolution of approval of this deal and to vote it down by an overwhelming majority.

What will this do?

It will demonstrate for the world that the American people, the American Congress, and future administrations are not morally or legally bound by this agreement. It will set the stage for a subsequent administration to demand that the limits on uranium centrifuges are continued well past year 10 of this agreement. So the current administration will take advantage of the good, we will suffer the bad, but in the future we will not have to deal with the ugly.

The second approach we can take is to consider a resolution of disapproval. Unlike a resolution of approval, a resolution of disapproval, if adopted, would have immediate legal effects under U.S. law. It would blow a hole in the deal. But as I will get to it, possibly the wrong hole and perhaps no hole at all. Because if we were to consider a resolution of disapproval, I think it would pass this House. I think it might get 60 votes in the other body. The President has already announced he will veto it. And then, as far as I can tell, we would not override the veto.

Now, this would have a similar legal effect to us voting down a resolution of approval. Overall, the majority of the House and the majority of the Senate would have voted to disapprove. But that last picture will be a picture of the proponents of this agreement winning by not losing more than two-thirds of the vote. That conveys in the most confused way the fact that this agreement will not be binding on future administrations and future Congresses.

There is, of course, the possibility that we somehow override a Presidential veto. That does not put us back where we were yesterday. That does not reinstitute sanctions. That does not create a good platform for creating a better deal, because by then many UN sanctions will be lifted. Our trading partners in Europe will already be doing business. The President will have told the world that Iran is acting reasonably and Congress is acting unreasonably.

Under such circumstance, Iran would get the lion's share of sanctions relief. They would be denied some sanctions relief because U.S. law would remain in effect.

But Iran would have every excuse not to deliver the important good parts of this deal, not to ship their uranium stockpiles out of the country, not to decommission two-thirds of their centrifuges.

So if we pass over a Presidential veto, a resolution of disapproval, we have not blown up the deal and taken us back to where we had the deal.

Rather, we have created a circumstance where Iran has literally split the U.S. Government, with Congress pushing in one direction, the President pushing in another direction, and every nation in the world taking its cue from the President.

Instead, I suggest that we would be in a stronger position if we demonstrate to the world that Congress does not accept this agreement, it is not binding on the American people, the President may not be legally constrained for the remainder of his term in implementing this deal, getting us the good, suffering the bad, but knowing that the ugly is something that needs to be confronted by another administration.

It is another administration that needs to prevent Iran from claiming that it will have the right to unlimited centrifuges 10 years from now but, instead, demanding a renegotiation of this deal.

Finally, the sanctions relief promised in Vienna is relief only from those sanctions due to Iran's nuclear program. It is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. It is not a protection and a grant of authority to Tehran to engage in all kinds of evil activity in the Middle East and elsewhere.

If Iran continues to support Assad, we need to impose additional sanctions for that reason. If they continue to destabilize Yemen, we need to impose sanctions for that reason. And we cannot give Iran a free pass just because they have entered into this particular deal. This is not rapprochement with Iran.

This is a deal that has, in its first year, the good and the bad and, in its 10th year, is so ugly that we have to demand additional negotiations.

When we make that demand, we need to make that demand in the voice of a President in a future administration who is determined to say that Iran can never have an unlimited number of centrifuges, Iran can never have an unlimited quality of centrifuges, Iran can never be a few days from a nuclear weapon, and that, in order to prevent that, we have the legal right to put all options on the table.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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