Iran

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, on Iran, with his failed and reckless war in Iran, Trump has turned ``the art of the deal'' into ``the art of the blunder.'' Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and JD Vance are too afraid to come in front of the American people and the whole Senate to defend their war and so-called understanding, so now Trump will talk only to Senate Republicans behind closed doors. Senate Republicans need to grill Donald Trump for answers--for answers on where negotiations stand--when he meets with them at the Capitol tomorrow.

Trump and Vance hadn't even finished their phony victory lap yesterday when Iran announced that it did not make any commitments to allow nuclear inspections--no commitments to allow nuclear inspections--even though that was supposed to be one of the mainstays of what Trump was pursuing. Trump also claimed that the Strait of Hormuz was fully open even though shipping through the waterway remains a small fraction of what it was before the war. In more than a week after announcing side deals and so-called understandings with Iran, the administration still hasn't briefed Congress or the American people on what has actually been agreed to.

Wishful thinking won't end this war, and certainly Senate Republicans' calls to pump hundreds of billions of dollars more into Trump's fiasco will make matters even worse.

Republicans can complain about Trump's war, his secrecy, and his disastrous deal with Iran all they want behind closed doors, but the only way to ensure this war ends once and for all is for Republicans to act.

Later today, Democrats will once again put Republicans on the record as to whether they want Trump's disastrous war to continue by forcing a vote on a House-passed Iran War Powers Resolution for the first time. We have held nine other votes on our War Powers Resolutions to end the war, and Senate Republicans have left the American people disappointed each time. We have forced this fight on the floor again and again for more than 100 days: Only Congress has the power to take our Nation to war, not Donald Trump alone.

Republicans need to support our War Powers Resolution to end the war, and they need to hold Trump's feet to the fire in their meeting tomorrow.

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