Strengthening America's Security in the Middle East Act of 2019--Motion

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I come to talk about the bill before us, S. 1. We have had multiple attempts to get onto this bill. I am hopeful that today will be that day.

Venezuela

Mr. President, I wanted to briefly, for just a moment, divert to a different topic on Venezuela that was in the news about an hour and a half ago. The administration announced additional measures. It has been covered in the press, largely as sanctions on the regime of Nicolas Maduro, the illegitimate usurper and head of the criminal syndicate that controls the security agencies in that country.

While it most certainly is going to hurt him, I think it is important to point out that the more accurate way to describe it is that Venezuela sends about 500 billion barrels of crude oil a day to the United States to be refined. That belongs to the Venezuelan people. What has been happening is that U.S. refineries pay for it. It is about three-quarters of the cash generated by the state-run oil company.

Then, Maduro and his cronies steal that money--not to build roads or feed people. They steal it to bribe and keep people loyal to him. If you are a high-ranking general in Venezuela, with the fancy uniforms and the stars and bars, in those pictures that you see--why are they loyal to Maduro? They are ``loyal'' to him because he keeps providing them access to corruption. One way is by pilfering and completely taking all that cash out of the state-run oil company. That ends today.

What is going to be done now is that U.S. refineries are still allowed to buy crude, but the payments, instead of being made to Maduro so he can steal it, will be set aside in an account to be used by the legitimate government of that country. If you are one of these corrupt officials who has been ``loyal'' to Maduro up until today because of the money, that is about to end, as well, and perhaps you should reevaluate your loyalty, for lack of a better term.

S. 1

Mr. President, the topic before us today is S. 1. This bill, among other things, is a response to decisions that were made recently on the U.S. presence in Syria. I believe that the decision to draw down is a mistake. I have communicated that to the President, and he invited us to the White House a couple of weeks ago to have a conversation with a group of us. Irrespective of what ends up happening, there are going to be byproducts of that decision. There will be consequences of it. Several of those consequences are going to directly impact our allies in the region.

Let me begin by saying that it will directly impact the United States. We already see that ISIS in Syria was on the path to morphing into an insurgency. An insurgency is different than what they used to be. ISIS used to take over big pieces of land and fly their black flag, and they had buildings. In some ways, that is terrifying because they control land and they have people under their command. In some ways, it is easier to target them. They are telling you where they are, and you can see it, and it is out in the open.

Insurgency is different. It is when you blend into the population. By day, you might be a baker or guy who runs a cafe. By night, you are an ISIS killer. They sort of come in and out of the population. They don't control large swaths of territory. They sort of embed themselves. This insurgency is the threat we face and the challenge we had in Iraq that led to the surge to have to come back in and rectify it. ISIS was already on the path to doing that. This will make it easier for them. It is harder to target an insurgency than it is to target the caliphate.

I am deeply concerned that the U.S. withdrawal will make it easier for them not to just establish an insurgency but, worst of all, it will provide greater operational safety. That means more space in which they can plot to attack the United States and our interests around the world, and even here in the Homeland. There is real reason to be concerned about that. You know, 9/11 doesn't happen if al-Qaida doesn't have a safe haven in Afghanistan. I fear what ISIS might be able to do if, in portions of Syria, they are able to establish a safe haven from which they can raise money, produce videos, recruit, try to inspire terrorist attacks abroad, and even direct them.

But one of the other byproducts is the impact it has with regard to Israel. Envision for a moment a small country whose narrowest point is only 9 or 10 miles wide, and it faces a threat to its north in Syria. In Syria already, in addition to ISIS and all of these other criminal and terrorist elements that are there, you have a growing Iranian presence. That growing Iranian presence begins with Iran itself. If current trends continue, Iran is going to base within Syria surface-to- air missiles designed to shoot down airplanes. They are going to base ballistic missiles even closer now to Syria. They don't have to launch them up to Israel. They don't have to launch them from Iran. They can now launch them from Syrian territory, just off the Israeli border. They have UAVs. We have seen how the Houthis have helped to operationalize those. All of that is sponsored by Iran operating out of Yemen.

One of the mortal enemies that Israel faces is Hezbollah. They are headquartered primarily in Lebanon, but there are Hezbollah elements all over Syria. For a long time now, they have been getting their armaments and weaponry from Iran, but it had to be flown, especially in the middle of this conflict.

Imagine that now Iran has the ability to arm and equip Hezbollah with all of these things, not just from the air but through a ground route where they can actually ship things to them from the ground. That is why they so desperately care about what is happening in Syria. It gains them operational space--not to mention that Hezbollah is in Syria.

There is a wing of Hezbollah that is inside of Syria. Imagine that now, if you are Israel, you already face the threat of Hezbollah. Hezbollah has already developed rockets that they are now making. They are not shipping them anymore. They are now building these rockets. They are developing these rockets in Lebanese territory. They are not the rockets from the last time they had a war with Israel. These new rockets are precision guided, meaning they can actually aim them to hit certain areas and avoid hitting others.

They have a lot more than they used to have. Just by volume, they can overwhelm Israeli defenses very quickly or potentially. You already have that problem in Lebanon. Imagine that exact same problem, not just from Lebanon but to the north of you, coming from Syria, just across the Golan Heights.

Imagine you are Israel and you have your mortal enemy Iran, your mortal enemy Assad, your mortal enemy Hezbollah, and these other radical Shia groups all to the north of you in that country. Israel is taking action. They are increasingly and openly acknowledging this as they launch these attacks into Syria to try to degrade their capabilities and put themselves in that position. They cannot allow people and they cannot allow organizations whose very existence is justified by the destruction of the Jewish State to openly operate and increase their capacity just north of their borders. That is what is happening, and that is why Israel is increasingly striking.

Listen to the words in a broadcast that I believe was yesterday or the day before. The head of Hezbollah was on television in an open television interview, and he basically warned Israel. He said: If Israel continues to strike within Syria in this way, it is going to lead to a war. It is going to lead to a war because Syria and its allies, including them, but also Iran, are going to have to retaliate for these attacks.

Walk through this with me. Israel attacks out of self-defense because they have to. Syria, Hezbollah, and Iran, and a gang of others respond against Israel. Then, Israel has to respond in kind, potentially, even hitting Hezbollah inside of Lebanon, and suddenly we have another Israel-Hezbollah war, but much broader than the last one because it will involve Syria and it will involve Iran, and it will be far deadlier because, unlike the last time, they now have a lot more of these missiles and these missiles are precision-guided.

This is the threat that Israel faces. It is very real. Events there can quickly spiral into that. One of the things our bill does is it puts in law the memorandum of understanding between the United States and Israel that says that, in the case of conflict, the United States will be there to help Israel rearm and reequip itself, and we will work hand-in-hand with them on things like missile defense, which are mutually beneficial, by the way, because all these innovations happening there can also benefit us here or by protecting our presence around the world.

Why is this bill important? First, because of the practical implications of it. We want Israelis to be able to defend and protect themselves. It sets aside, in our arsenal, weapons that are held there for purposes of if Israel ever needs them. For those who are worried about whether that would degrade our own capability, the law says it has to be done in a way that doesn't degrade our own capabilities to defend ourselves. It sets in place the assurance that if Israel gets into one of these wars that quickly escalates against multiple parties--Hezbollah, Iran, potentially Syria, themselves--and they start running out of weaponry--rockets to defend themselves, munitions and the like--we will be there to quickly rearm them. That is just the practical implication of it.

Here is the other: Israel's adversaries will know this too. They would know that if their goal is to overwhelm Israel and deplete Israel, it will not work because the United States is committed to them.

Our hope here is two-fold. One is to strengthen Israel so they would be able to withstand such an assault, but the other is to hopefully deter a war by making it very clear that Israel will never run out of missiles. They will never run out of munitions to defend themselves because the United States will be there to support them every step of the way.

One of the first things this bill does is it establishes that into our law because this is not a threat that is going to go away in 2 years or even 5 years. This threat is an ancient one. It has grown more dangerous.

This bill was held up because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said they didn't want to hear any bills until the shutdown was over if the bill didn't have to do with the shutdown. The shutdown is over. I am hopeful today that this bill, which I believe enjoys wide bipartisan support, when we finally get the vote on it and passage, that we will have an extraordinary number of votes across the aisle and across this Chamber and that we will finally begin debate on this important topic.

There are other elements in this bill involving human rights violations that occurred in Syria, supporting Jordan, and the BDS movement, which we will talk more about tomorrow. At its core, the linchpin is helping Israel defend itself.

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