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Floor Speech
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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague and strongly support his resolution that will be voted on tomorrow, and I have taken the floor often on this topic and don't need to repeat things I have said before. But today, I guess what I want to say is basically this: The American public does not like being lied to by its government. Of course we don't but particularly on matters of war.
I am old enough to remember two tragic circumstances where the American public was lied to by their civilian leadership about war-- many lies were told by successive administrations, beginning with the Eisenhower administration and through Kennedy and Johnson in particular, about the Vietnam war--and how tragic it was when Americans realized that much of what they had been told that led, first, the United States to take over the French colonial project in Southeast Asia and then to engage in war--much of what they had been told was false.
When you are losing your sons and daughters--56,000 U.S. deaths in the Vietnam war--and then you find that the civilian leadership has been lying to you while troops have been serving honorably, it is incredibly embittering in a State like Virginia where there are so many military equities but to every State.
We were lied to about the war in Iraq. We were told that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. That was not true. We were told that Iraq was pursuing nuclear weapons and had weapons of mass destruction they would use against the United States. That was not true. But those were put on the table before a vote in Congress to engage in a war that most now agree 25 years later was a massive, massive mistake.
So I come from a State that lost a lot of people in Iraq and Afghanistan and Vietnam, and I join my colleague today to support his resolution because I believe the United States is not being told the truth about the situation in Iran.
First, the administration worked very, very hard up until essentially a week or so ago to avoid any public hearings about the war in either the House or the Senate, in the committees that have jurisdiction over important matters. I mean, not to have a public hearing about a war?
Right now--and I am going to go into this in an Armed Services Committee hearing later in the week--the administration is not even willing to share the legal rationale, the opinion developed by the Office of Legal Counsel at the State Department. They are not even willing to share that rationale with Members of the U.S. Senate. They won't share it with members of the Intel Committee. They won't share it with members of the Armed Services Committee. They won't share it with members of the Foreign Relations Committee. They won't even share the legal rationale. What are they afraid of? That raises some natural suspicion.
In at least two instances, I believe the administration is not being truthful with the American public about this war. One was the assertion of a whole different series of rationales, but one of the rationales that seems to now be the one that they rely on is, well, of course the war is needed to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. No, it isn't. We had stopped Iran from getting a nuclear weapon by a diplomatic deal that Donald Trump chose to tear up, as my colleague just mentioned. That had stopped Iran's nuclear program.
That deal was a comprehensive deal that took months, even years, to negotiate. It contained some provisions that were time-limited--5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years--but it contained two provisions that were permanent. The first was on page 1 of the deal: that Iran will not seek to purchase or acquire or develop nuclear weapons. That was a permanent pledge by Iran. The second part of the deal that was permanent was Iran agreed to permanent inspections by the IAEA, including inspections according to an additional protocol that had been developed by the nations of the world after North Korea had cheated on a nuclear program earlier.
Those were permanent pledges by Iran to not pursue nuclear weapons and to allow intrusive inspections, and President Trump decided, over the objection of his Secretaries of State and Defense, to tear up the deal. So when President Trump says now: Well, we have to wage war; we have to subject our troops to being killed and being injured and billions of dollars of costs and Americans and people all over the world paying more for gas to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon-- that is a lie. Diplomacy had stopped them until President Trump tore it up.
To make matters worse, President Trump, with the United States, following a 12-day war of Israel against Iran to destroy their nuclear capacity, took additional action that the White House said had destroyed Iran's nuclear program.
So if we had controlled it first by diplomacy and then a year ago added on a war waged by Israel against Iran to obliterate the nuclear program, there was not a nuclear program that justified this war. There was no threat of any action anytime soon by Iran to develop nuclear weapons that justified this war.
I don't like to use this phrase. I don't use this phrase a lot: The White House has lied to the American public, and every time they say this war is justified to stop Iran's nuclear program, they are telling the American public a lie.
The second lie they are telling--and I will just say this and then hand it back to my colleague--is a different kind of a lie. If you state a set of facts that are true but you don't state the full set of facts, you are telling a lie. And I have heard President Trump and I have heard Secretary Hegseth say many times: We need to stop Iran because they have been a thorn in our side since 1979. They have been a thorn in our side for the last 47 years.
Our decision makers are acting as if the U.S.-Iran history started in 1979 when the Iranian people toppled their government and then, yes, in the aftermath of that toppling, started to say ``Death to America,'' ``Death to Israel.'' They act like that is the only history. My colleagues will recount Iranian misbehavior--taking over our Embassy, in violation of international law; funding proxies to attack the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut and other locations; funding proxies that attack U.S. troops who are in the region in or near Iran-- my colleagues will cite that information, and they will cite it accurately. And Iran has done a series of horrible things to their own people, to American positions, to other nations in the region. But my colleagues always ignore, the President always ignores, and Secretary Hegseth always ignores that history didn't start in 1979.
If you want to understand the history of this relationship between the United States and Iran, you have to go back to World War II when we were allies. There was a pivotal conference in the middle of World War II in Tehran in 1943 where the allies--the United States, the Soviet Union at the time, and Britain--guaranteed to Iran its sovereignty and its independence and its borders, and the Iranian people loved the United States, and we were allies.
Then in 1953, during the Eisenhower administration, the United States made a catastrophic mistake. There is a recent book by Scott Anderson called ``King of Kings'' that lays this out in clear and unmistakable detail. The United States decided we would topple the democratic Government of Iran. In 1953, the United States, through the CIA, engineered a coup. We toppled the democratic government. We installed the Shah, a dictator. We funded the secret police of the Shah, who tortured, exiled, imprisoned, and killed thousands of Iranians. And the United States basically put this puppet government--a dictator--over the Iranian people from 1953 until they finally tired of it, and they cast that government off in 1979.
Guess what. Twenty-six years of the United States funding a dictatorship killing and torturing Iranians led the new Government of Iran to be--drumroll--anti-United States. We turned Iranians from friends into enemies. We didn't have to do that, but we did it.
Secretary Hegseth and the President never mention that. They don't mention that after Iran overtook our Embassy, we funded Iraq to wage war on Iran. We gave Iraq funds. We gave Iraq intel. And in a 7- or 8- year war, Iraq--we funded Saddam Hussein to wage war against Iran. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians were killed, and they knew the United States was partially responsible for it.
In the late 1980s, a U.S. Navy vessel, the Vincennes, shot down an Iranian commercial aircraft, killing 290 civilians. It took us years to admit that we did it, but we eventually admitted that.
The United States invaded Iran's next-door neighbors to the east and west to topple their governments--Afghanistan and Iraq--and Iran believed: Well, you toppled our government in 1953. You are probably preparing to do it again.
In this recent war on Iran, we have wiped out their leadership, we have killed civilians, and we bombed a school, killing schoolgirls. Now, we all know that the United States does not intentionally decide to target schools. That is not what we do intentionally. But to an Iranian who watched the United States intentionally topple their government in 1953, intentionally participate in an assassination campaign against their leaders, shoot down a civilian aircraft in the late 1980s, intentionally fund Iraq to wage war against Iran--an Iranian will look at U.S. actions and say: Wait a minute. This is part of a pattern. We were friends until you decided to topple our government in 1953.
The point I am making about this is that if you are not willing to be honest about the history and acknowledge not only Iranian misbehavior--which continues to this day. They just executed somebody in Iran--a student--in a gross violation of human rights. So you have to acknowledge that the Iranian regime has conducted all kinds of bad activities. But if you are not willing to acknowledge the role the United States has played in turning this nation that was a nation of allies into enemies, then you are going to get the policy wrong. You will get the policy wrong if you don't acknowledge the truth.
What is that truth? as I finish. The truth is, if more war between the United States and Iran would bring a solution to any of these problems, then we would have found the answer at some point between 1953 and now. We have had a back-and-forth going between the United States and Iran since 1953, and it has not produced peace, it has not produced stability, and it has not produced anything for the good of the Iranian people or the American people, frankly. For us to think now that, you know what, more war, just a little more war would be the right thing to do to bring a better resolution to this painful 75-year chapter--it shows a profound ignorance of our history and a just shocking level of naivety.
So that is why I have joined with my colleagues every week to look this Senate in the eye and say: As a deliberative body with constitutional powers and an oath that we have taken to provide a check against an Executive--particularly on matters of war--we can't let this go under the radar screen, classified hearings only. We have to be as loud and consistent as can be to say that more war between the United States and Iran is not an answer to anything. It hasn't been an answer to anything since 1953, and it is not an answer to anything now. That is why I support this resolution.
We should not be at war without a vote of Congress. Even if there were such a vote--I would vote against it, but if it were to pass this body and be signed by the President, I would then drop my complaint that the war is illegal. I would say it is unwise, but I would be outvoted, as I am often on events, and thus it wouldn't be illegal.
It is an illegal war. It is an unwise war that demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of the deep, tragic history between the United States and Iran. And for that, to my colleague from Oregon, I strongly support your resolution.
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