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Floor Speech
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Mr. MURPHY. First, this is a pretty long piece of legislation and impactful in the policy it makes. It was introduced yesterday.
It is probably not a great idea for the Senate to short circuit any process of reviewing this legislation and speed to its passage today, but Senator Ernst is a serious thinker on matters of national security, and so I do want to engage for 2 minutes on the merits because I think it is important to have this conversation.
Senator Ernst is right. At the heart, at the center of U.S. foreign policy has to be the protection of our citizens. We have to be coldblooded about making sure that our policy keeps our people safe, both here in the United States and abroad.
The good news, when it comes to Iran policy, is that we have tried both a policy of engagement and diplomacy and a policy of escalating sanction, and we can judge from those two periods of time which one better protected American security and the specific security of Americans here and in the region.
During the period of time that the United States and Iran were in an agreement regarding nuclear weapons together, there were not credible plots being hatched against U.S. persons inside the United States. There were not Iranian proxies firing at U.S. forces inside the Middle East. But as soon as the United States removed itself from that agreement and started this process of escalating sanction, all of a sudden, Americans and American assets were at risk all over the world. The plots started against U.S. persons here. The Iranians and their proxies started regularly shooting at Americans in the region.
And so the facts are the facts--less threat to the United States when we were in a diplomatic agreement and more threats to the United States when we weren't in a diplomatic agreement. I think that speaks to the question of whether engagement or maximum pressure actually--actually-- in the end protects Americans best.
But, second, I want to make this point, and I think it is an important one. This is called the PUNISH Act. And I understand why. It speaks to a view of sanctions as simply a mechanism of punishment. And there is an element of sanctions that is sending a moral message, a moral signal, about our values and how they differ from the values of those that we are sanctioning. But sanctions are also used to influence. In fact, most of the sanctions that we are passing are not just merely punitive. They are actually designed to try to change the behavior of a regime.
So that is why, if we entered into a nuclear agreement, the only sanctions that I think we should remove are the sanctions that were specifically put in place to influence the Iranians to give up their nuclear weapons program.
In fact, I would argue--and I think President Biden would argue; I am sure President Biden would argue--that we should keep in place the sanctions that have been levied against Iran to try to influence their ballistic missile program or their support for terrorists.
And so I think it is just important for us all to come to the conclusion that, although there is a punishment element of sanctions, if we don't use sanctions to influence behavior, then I am not sure that the policy of sanctions matters as effectively as it should.
And, lastly, this: Iran, they are malevolent actors. They are not good people. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't enter into negotiations when we can take steps to protect our interests, the security of our people.
The nuclear bombs that we dropped on Japan were 15-kiloton weapons. Modern nuclear weapons range from 100 to 800 kilotons. So, yes, unapologetically, we should have a policy as a component of our national security to do whatever is possible to make sure that more countries--especially, more wildly irresponsible regimes--don't get their hands on nuclear weapons. And, yes, that should be more important than many of our other priorities.
Yes, in fact, we should elevate the conversation about stopping a regime like Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. They are bad actors. They are targeting U.S. forces. They are targeting U.S. persons. They are supporting terrorism. That, to me, is the reason, is the rationale why we should make sure that that regime--so dangerous, so destructive, so malevolent--doesn't get its hands on a nuclear weapon.
Their bad action in the region is a reason to engage in diplomacy to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon, not a reason not to engage in that diplomacy. And so I understand that it is sometimes incredibly hard and distasteful to get your arms wrapped around engagement with an enemy.
But I will leave you with this. The Soviet Union, through their proxies, killed tens of thousands of Americans during the Cold War. There was no doubt that they possessed on a daily basis the existential ability to wipe out the United States. But we did, at the very least, four bilateral nuclear deals with the Soviet Union, seven multilateral nuclear deals with the Soviet Union, not because we misunderstood their aims and desires but because we thought it was so important to limit the scope of their nuclear program given their intentions to wipe out democracy all around the world.
I agree that it is apples to oranges comparing the Soviet Union to Iran, but the same principle applies. We need to elevate our work when it comes to nonproliferation. That just needs to matter more, and we shouldn't be afraid to engage with enemies and adversaries, especially on this question of making sure that their bad behavior doesn't end up having, amongst its tools, a nuclear weapon that could kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.
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