Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. I have such respect for my colleague from Oklahoma. We are often on the same side of issues related to matters of national security and the Middle East, but I disagree with his analysis that he has presented here today. Let me make just a remark or two about his immediate request and then make a few remarks about the broader work to try to protect the world from a nuclear weapons-armed Iran.

First, as I understand it--and I just had a few days to take a look at the underlying legislation--it would significantly remove the administration's discretion to waive sanctions or to enter into certain oil sales or authorize business with Iranian financial institutions in that only a treaty entered into by the United States would provide that authority to the administration.

I think that is generally bad policy.

We can imagine a whole set of diplomatic engagements with any nation, including Iran, in which an executive may wish to toggle sanctions or licenses in order to provoke some behavior beneficial to the United States. That is, in fact, why we regularly build waivers into our sanctions statutes. So to suggest that on Iran policy, the President is going to have no ability to impact sanctions or licenses until a treaty is entered into ties the administration's hands--both Republican and Democratic administrations--in a way that I simply don't think is helpful.

I understand my friend's argument.

He is not a supporter of the JCPOA, and he does not desire for the United States to enter back into a nuclear agreement with Iran. And at the heart of this request is the essence of President Trump's Iran policy--the idea that if we just keep hammering Iran with sanctions that either their behavior will get better or they will at some point choose to come to the table and do a comprehensive deal--the nuclear program, their ballistic missile program, their support for terrorism.

Now, I think that was a credible argument back during the Obama administration. Many people said Obama shouldn't give Iran anything until Iran comes to the table on everything.

This Congress went a different way. We ended up taking a vote that, by our rules, allowed for the nuclear agreement to go forward. But we now have the benefit of the opposition's argument to the JCPOA having been tested for 4 years. Trump basically took that philosophy--keep sanctioning Iran; don't worry about the fact that it is unilateral, and eventually Iran will come to the table on everything. He tested that for 4 years, and it was an unmitigated disaster--an unmitigated disaster. Not only did Iran not come to the table on everything, they came to the table on nothing. Their behavior in the region got much worse and much more adversarial to U.S. interests.

Just look at the reality on the ground in a place like Lebanon or Yemen or Iraq or Syria. At the end of Trump's term, did Iran have more or less influence in those places? Unquestionably more. More integrated with the Houthis--by the end of Trump's term, they were in charge of the Lebanese government. There was less separation between the Iraqi power structure and Tehran.

At the end of that 4-year period of time, testing maximum pressure, Iran was more deeply involved with its proxies than ever before. They were not negotiating with the United States on any of the conditions that the Trump administration laid down for us, and they were shooting at us.

There was not a single attack on U.S. servicemembers by Iranian proxies while the United States was in the JCPOA. Let me say it again: Not a single attack on U.S. servicemembers by Iranian proxies when the United States was in the JCPOA. They occur with regularity today. Attacks against U.S. forces in housing and on bases in Iraq and Syria restarted once we withdrew from the deal. In this year alone, there have been attacks in February, March, April, May, June, July, and August.

And so, I am not sure why we have to do a lot of guessing now as to whether we are better off with or without a nuclear agreement with Iran, because here's what we got for maximum pressure: American troops under fire, more support for proxies, no hopes of negotiation, and--the icing on the cake--an Iranian nuclear program that is now weeks away from having enough fissile material to produce a nuclear weapon. Compare that with a year away during the time of the agreement.

So we tested this theory that we just hit them with sanctions, hit them with sanctions, and, eventually, they capitulate. It didn't work by, I think, all objective measures. It didn't work. And so it makes sense that the Biden administration wants to engage and try to put back together a deal that was good for the United States and our allies.

And, lastly, I will say this. The Senator from Oklahoma is right. The Iranians are bad people. You can just see what they are doing right now in the streets of Tehran in brutally repressing another wave of protests. Listen to what the President said on TV just this week-- denying the Holocaust. These are our adversaries. This is an enemy. But all throughout American history, we have understood there are times when it makes sense to sit down across the table with your enemy and adversary and engage in diplomatic conversation that is good for you and good for the world. It is true that if Iran was further away from a nuclear weapon, it would be good for us and it would be good for other countries in the world, including Russia, which is why Russia is sometimes part of these negotiations. But I don't know that because something is good for everybody, it shouldn't be acceptable to the U.S. Congress.

And so I am going to object to this request because I believe that the JCPOA is the right thing for the security of this Nation; because I believe in diplomacy even with your adversaries; because I think we have tested the proposition that maximum pressure will work better than a nuclear agreement, and we now know the results; and I also believe that some of the details of this resolution would ultimately bind the hands of American Presidents in a way that, you know, probably isn't good precedent for the long-term security of the Nation.

So, again, I think my colleague comes to the floor with good faith objections and longstanding objections. I come down in a different place, and for that reason, I would object.

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