An Agreement with Iran Must Bar its Path to Nuclear Weapons

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, the deadline is bearing down on us for the President's nuclear agreement with Iran. So, at this moment, Congress must send the administration a strong message: In order to be acceptable, any agreement must bar every Iranian path to nuclear weapons.

This means the deal must last for decades. There has been a lot of reporting of stopgap deals that would try to restrict Iran in the short term while giving it a blank check after just some 10 years. Such an agreement would be absurd, Mr. Speaker. Given Iran's longstanding nefarious quest for nuclear weapons and its government's genocidal anti-Semitism, I and the vast majority of my colleagues in Congress would never accept such a bad deal.

Iran will also have to dismantle its current nuclear infrastructure and turn over nearly all of its stockpile of uranium. Iran prefers to merely ``disconnect'' its 19,000 centrifuges. That is totally unacceptable

--coming from the Iranian Government with its murderous threats to annihilate the State of Israel and its obsessive hatred of Jews worldwide. It is estimated that centrifuges could be reconnected in a matter of mere months--and so they must be dismantled, and the core should be removed from the Arak heavy water reactor.

It also means there can be no lifting or a reduction of sanctions until the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, certifies that Iran has complied with its commitments under the agreement; and IAEA inspectors must be granted access to any and all suspected sites. This access must be unimpeded, Mr. Speaker, meaning that the IAEA must be able to conduct inspections at military sites as well. The rule must be full access--anytime, anywhere.

Iran must also fully account for its past efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Unless it does so, there is no way to establish a baseline from which to measure its current capacities and potential future violations and responsibly gauge a ``breakout time.''

Mr. Speaker, these are minimum criteria. In order to get congressional approval, any deal the President presents to Congress will have to have met them. The Nuclear Agreement Review Act gives Congress the authority to review any agreement with Iran and to pass a joint resolution barring any statutory sanctions relief. The administration and the Iranian Government need to know that the vast majority of my colleagues will be as firm as I am in insisting on them. I am certainly prepared to vote against any agreement that does not meet these criteria.

Mr. Speaker, the Obama administration has shown itself far too weak in dealing with Iran. For example, last week, Secretary Kerry said that the United States is ``not fixated'' on Iran's explaining its past behavior--a significant backtracking on his earlier insistence on this crucial point.

In fact, throughout June, we have been reading disturbing reports of administration weakness in the negotiations on a whole range of issues--from demanding access to potential nuclear sites to signaling a willingness to repeal non-nuclear-related sanctions. Just yesterday, five of the President's top former Iran advisers wrote an open letter, warning that the agreement ``may fall short of meeting the administration's own standard of a `good' agreement.'' The letter outlined concerns about concessions at the same time that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appeared to back away from other preliminary understandings.

There are many other signs of the administration's weakness, Mr. Speaker, in its dealings with Iran. Fundamentally, it refuses to speak truths that are obvious to everyone: that the Iranian Government has made itself the enemy of the United States and the genocidal enemy of the State of Israel, and that our goal must always be to prevent it from acquiring or manufacturing nuclear weapons now and long into the future. A nuclear Iran would be a grave threat to our country and an existential threat to Israel, our closest ally. That is intolerable. The administration seems to no longer recall that Iran is the leading sponsor of Hezbollah and Hamas.

Mr. Speaker, the case of Pastor Saeed Abedini is another sad sign of administration weakness toward Iran. Saeed Abedini is an American citizen. He was in Iran in 2012, visiting family and building an orphanage, when he was taken prisoner. As a matter of fact, he had been given permission by the Iranians to do just that. Twelve years before, he had converted to Christianity and, later, was involved in the home church movement in Iran. Knowing about his conversion and earlier engagement in home churches, Iranian authorities approved his 2012 trip, approved his orphanage building, and then imprisoned him. He has been in prison ever since then and has suffered immensely from beatings that have caused internal bleeding, death threats, solitary confinement, and more. His wife, Naghmeh, who is also an American and has been a heroic champion for her husband and their two children, has also suffered. I have chaired two hearings when we have heard from Naghmeh, who told the compelling story of her husband, of her love for her husband, of the gross injustice that he has been forced to suffer. It is time the administration made this a priority and a very, very important matter in the nuclear negotiations.

The administration is not doing enough to secure his release. There is no doubt about it. The administration does little more than raise his case and those of other American prisoners on the sidelines of the nuclear negotiations because it sees the prisoners as sideline issues. This is an American citizen, unjustly imprisoned now for over 1,000 days--and tortured--in Iran, and the administration has a few marginal conversations with Iranian officials and considers that good enough. It is deeply disturbing. It ought to be a central priority.

Mr. Speaker, it is also a very alarming sign of what we might expect the administration to present us with when we return to session in early July. That is why Congress' responsibility is to be prepared to maintain a much firmer line on the outcome of these negotiations--when we review the agreement--than the administration seems to be taking.

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