[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 162 (Friday, December 16, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13767-S13768]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      CONDEMNING ANTI-SEMITIC STATEMENTS OF THE PRESIDENT OF IRAN

  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate 
proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 337, a revised 
version of the same resolution.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the resolution by title.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A resolution (S. Res. 337) to condemn the harmful, 
     destructive, and anti-Semitic statements of Mahmoud 
     Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, and to demand an apology 
     for those statements of hate and animosity toward all Jewish 
     people of the world.

  There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the 
resolution.
  Mr. SANTORUM. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed 
to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid 
upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The resolution (S. Res. 337) was agreed to.
  The preamble was agreed to.
  The resolution, with its preamble, reads as follows:

                              S. Res. 337

       Whereas Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, 
     declared in an October 26, 2005, address at the World Without 
     Zionism conference in Tehran that ``the new wave that has 
     started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic World 
     too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic 
     World'' and that Israel ``must be wiped off the map.'';
       Whereas the President of Iran told reporters on December 
     8th at an Islamic conference in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, ``Some 
     European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed 
     millions of innocent Jews in furnaces. . .although we don't 
     accept this claim.'';
       Whereas Mr. Ahmadinejad then stated, ``If the Europeans are 
     honest they should give some of their provinces in Europe . . 
     . to the Zionists, and the Zionists can establish their state 
     in Europe.'';
       Whereas on December 14, 2005, Mr. Ahmadinejad said live on 
     Iranian television, ``they have invented a myth that Jews 
     were massacred and place this above God, religions and the 
     prophets.'';
       Whereas the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 
     beginning with its founder, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, 
     have issued statements of hate against the United States, 
     Israel, and Jewish peoples;
       Whereas certain leaders, including Ahmadi Nezhad, and the 
     Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, have similarly called for the 
     destruction of the United States, and the Islamic Republic of 
     Iran has funded, armed, trained, assisted, and sheltered 
     leading terrorists, including terrorists in Iraq who use 
     Iranian support to kill military personnel of the United 
     States;
       Whereas an estimated 6,000,000 Jews were killed in the Nazi 
     Holocaust;
       Whereas the remarks of President Ahmadinejad have been 
     denounced around the world and condemned by among others, the 
     political leaders of the United States, Arab nations, Israel, 
     Europe, and the United Nations;
       Whereas it is a crime in the Federal Republic of Germany to 
     deny the existence of the Holocaust; and
       Whereas the United Nations, in General Assembly Resolution 
     181 (1947), recommended the adoption of the Plan of Partition 
     with Economic Union for Palestine, which called for an 
     independent Jewish State: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the Senate--
       (1) condemns the recent statement by President Ahmadinejad 
     that denied the occurrence of the Holocaust and supported 
     moving the State of Israel to Europe;
       (2) demands an official apology for these damaging, anti-
     Semitic statements that ignore history, human suffering, and 
     the loss of life during the Holocaust;
       (3) and
       (6) reaffirms the need for Iran to--
       (A) end its support for international terrorism; and
       (B) join other Middle Eastern countries in seeking a 
     successful outcome of the Middle East peace process.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Oregon. I know 
he personally believes in the original resolution. Before I get into 
the disparities between the two resolutions and some of the difficulty 
we have had over the last several days in trying to pass this 
resolution, it is important to understand how reprehensible these 
statements are and how dangerous they are in light of not only the 
conflicts within the Middle East but the frightening perspective of 
Iran having nuclear capabilities.
  We hear mixed reports. We have heard reports from the overseas press 
in the last few weeks about fears that Iran is actually within months, 
potentially, of having nuclear weapons capability. The idea that a 
country with a President who says that Israel should be wiped off the 
map and then amends the statement, if you can call it that, to say, 
Well, maybe they could move it to Europe, Germany or Austria, as 
Charles Krauthammer recently noted:

       . . . perhaps near the site of an old concentration camp.

  This is the kind of ridiculous statement one would expect out of a 
street merchant who is out there spewing anti-Semitic statements but 
not from the President of a country. It is unbelievable. As 
unbelievable as that statement is, it is almost equally unbelievable, 
the silence of response from the civilized world in condemning this 
statement and calling for actions on the part of the United Nations to 
condemn Iran, sanction Iran, and a whole host of other remedies 
available.
  This condemnation we passed is a mild condemnation. We tried to make 
it a little stronger. We didn't achieve that. But what we need to 
recognize is that Iran, as the President has said, is a real threat. It 
is a real threat because there are people in that country, not the 
average Iranian but people at the leadership levels of that government 
who have explicit designs to not only disrupt the process of democracy 
building in the Middle East but also disrupt any attempt for peace and 
finally eliminate millions of Israelis from the face of the Earth.
  That is something that the civilized world should not stand for. The 
United Nations should not stand for it, should not countenance the 
continuation of Iran sitting where they sit without having to undergo 
some sort of sanction or reprimand.
  It is important to understand how destabilizing Iran is in our fight 
to create stable democracies in the Middle East, how they foment anti-
Semitic, anti-Zionist, as well as anti-democratic sentiment in the 
Middle East, and how they sponsor terrorism.
  One of the pieces of legislation I am most proud of in my time in the 
Senate was the Syrian Accountability Act. Throughout the years, Iranian 
influence in Lebanon and Syria has oppressed fellow Arabs. Well, 
Iranians are not Arabs but oppress fellow Muslims and obviously some 
Christians. But it is important for us, as a Senate, as a people, to 
understand the threat that Iran poses to everything we believe in and 
the larger picture of what we are trying to accomplish in Iraq and the 
Middle East.
  We are trying to do something that for a long time people in this 
country and even some today believe is not possible. Some have 
suggested we can't win the mission we have engaged in. The mission we 
have engaged in is to create a stable democracy in the Middle East, in 
the Arab world. The mission we have engaged in, more fundamentally, is 
to provide increased national security to this country. That is the 
first mission.
  The strategy is to ensure security for this country. The tactic is to 
establish democracies in an area of the world that threatened this 
country. Iran stands starkly opposed to that objective and, further, 
with statements such as this, destabilizes the entire region and 
foments and uses sort of the lowest base, primitive instincts of the 
haters in the Middle East to undermine our objective.
  We are succeeding in Iraq in spite of the Iranians. We are succeeding 
in Afghanistan in spite of the Iranians. We

[[Page S13768]]

are moving democracy forward. But we dare not take our eye off what 
Iran is doing and is preparing. They are actively pursuing a nuclear 
weapons program under the nose of the rest of the world, with virtually 
no real attempt to limit that development.
  When you see these statements combined with that, it is a flare that 
should be going up across the world of what we may be confronted with 
in the next months or years, with a nuclear bomb. This resolution is a 
statement that needed to be made. I am glad we passed this resolution. 
But we need to do more. I have authored a piece of legislation on Iran, 
which calls for the funding of pro-democracy groups within Iran. Others 
have offered ideas to provide increased sanctions on Iran.
  If you look at people who study the country of Iran and tell you--we 
had a very good hearing that Senator Coburn chaired a few weeks ago. 
When you listened to the testimony at that hearing, which I had the 
opportunity to do for a little while, you hear that the Iranian street 
is one that is largely sympathetic to the United States and to the 
cause of freedom and democracy. They are oppressed people. Oppressed 
people generally do want and seek freedom. So we have, I believe, an 
opportunity, as we have had opportunities in the past, when we lent our 
ideas and our encouragement to help develop either exile movements or 
freedom movements within the countries that are a threat to the region 
and a threat to our country.
  It is important for the Senate to speak out and say we stand with 
you--those of you who seek freedom, those of you who seek democracy, 
those of you who do not want to be threatening to your neighbors, or 
say, as the President of Iran has said, he wants to wipe Israel off the 
map. We have an obligation in the Senate, and I will be pressing very 
hard next year to pass my legislation on Iran.
  I remember several years ago when Senator Boxer and I introduced 
legislation on Syria, and we did not get a lot of support in the 
committee and had trouble on the floor of the Senate. We had trouble at 
the White House. They were opposed to the bill. Eventually, the 
administration, the committee, and the Senate came along and we were 
able to pass the Syria Accountability Act. Literally, within a few 
months, we saw dramatic changes in Lebanon.
  The Syria Accountability Act was a measure that called for Syria to 
get out of Lebanon and imposed sanctions on Syria for not doing so. The 
President, to my dismay, in some respects, didn't support it at first. 
Presidents don't often like Congress telling them what to do when it 
comes to foreign policy. But this President not only signed the Syria 
Accountability Act, he implemented the sanctions--a tough regime of 
sanctions--and it had a tremendous effect. I have had people come over 
from Lebanon and tell me of the importance of that particular 
legislation and the symbolism of America standing with the people of 
Lebanon against the evil dictator in Syria.
  The symbolism of us passing this resolution today, and the more than 
the symbolism of passing the Iran Freedom and Support Act, is an 
important sign in a time now with these kinds of comments that Iran has 
popped its head up again--its rather unattractive head--in the area of 
influencing policy in the Middle East. We tried in this resolution to 
match the language of the Iranian bill I have introduced with the 
language, as I said, with this resolution, but unfortunately, we were 
not able to clear that language. I want to read the changes we had to 
make in the resolved section of the resolution that were struck as 
unacceptable for us to be able to pass it by unanimous consent. The 
portions we had to drop were two resolved sections. The three things 
that are in the final version that passed say:

       Resolved, That the Senate
       (1) condemns the recent statement by President Ahmadinejad 
     that denied the occurrence of the Holocaust and supported 
     moving the State of Israel to Europe;
       (2) demands an official apology for these damaging, anti-
     Semitic statements that ignore history, human suffering, and 
     the loss of life during the Holocaust;
       (6) reaffirms the need for Iran to
       (A) end its support for international terrorism;
       (B) join other Middle Eastern countries in seeking a 
     successful outcome of the Middle East peace process.

  What was struck were two sentences:

       The Senate supports efforts by the people of Iran to 
     exercise self-determination over the form of government of 
     their country.

  That was not acceptable to some here in the Senate. And second is:

       The Senate supports a national referendum in Iran, with 
     oversight by international observers and monitors, to certify 
     the integrity and fairness of the referendum.

  So we could not adopt tonight in the Senate the Senate saying to the 
people of Iran that we support efforts of self-determination and a 
national referendum that was free and fair. That is, in my mind, a 
rather unfortunate occurrence. But I found, from my perspective, that 
it was so important to condemn these actions that we agreed to strike 
those two sentences from the resolved clauses. I don't necessarily 
understand why anyone would oppose either of those sentences, those 
resolved clauses. They state that we are for freedom and democracy for 
all people, including the people of Iran. Maybe it is because we are 
pursuing that and it becomes such an issue of partisan controversy in 
the country of Iraq--or saying we support that same thing in Iran would 
somehow taint their criticism of the current mission in Iraq. I don't 
know. I am still groping for answers as to why those two clauses were 
not acceptable.
  What was not acceptable were the comments and the actions of 
developing nuclear weapons by the terrorist regime in Iran.
  I appreciate my colleagues for agreeing to pass this resolution. I 
thank all of the cosponsors. There were some 20 cosponsors of this 
resolution. The first Democrat was Senator Mikulski. I also thank my 
colleague in the chair for his patience and allowing me the opportunity 
to speak here tonight. He is also a cosponsor of the resolution. No one 
is a stronger advocate for peace and the mission we are trying to 
accomplish in the Middle East, and as well for the protection of the 
state of Israel, than the occupant of the chair. It is a pleasure to 
have the Senator from Minnesota in the chair while I am delivering 
these remarks. The Senator from Minnesota is truly one of the great 
leaders on the Foreign Relations Committee in this regard. I commend 
him for his efforts. I know he will be working with me on the Iran 
bill, on which he is a cosponsor, in trying to send a statement from 
the Senate that Iran is a threat--a real threat--and we need to do 
something other than simply stand back and jawbone international 
organizations--feckless international organizations-- in some respects, 
as the Senator from Minnesota knows, corrupt international 
organizations--to do something that they have shown no desire, 
willingness, or ability to accomplish, and that is to spread democracy, 
to lift people out of bondage into freedom.

  We in the United States have to begin to take steps. The steps we are 
talking about in this resolution and the bill we hope to pass next year 
are not military steps. That is the last resort. But we need to start 
acting. Sitting silently by, doing nothing as a crazy man as president 
of a country, potentially developing nuclear weapons in the most 
sensitive area of the world is not acceptable for the Senate and is not 
acceptable for this country.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Vitter). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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