[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 142 (Monday, September 24, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11969-S11973]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   IRANIAN REVOLUTIONARY GUARD CORPS

  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to speak on amendment No. 3017 
which Senator Kyl of Arizona and I have offered. This amendment would 
designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist 
organization and thereby subject this deadly, nefarious group to a 
series of economic and diplomatic sanctions that Senator Kyl and I 
think will be felt in Iran and that this group, because of its

[[Page S11970]]

dangerous and destabilizing work throughout Iraq and the Middle East, 
deserves.
  This is obviously a week in which the leader of Iran, President 
Ahmadi-Nejad, is in the United States of America. A great debate rages 
about what is the appropriate way to greet him? What sanctions, what 
platforms should be given to him? What sanctions should be discussed?
  Personally, I feel it was a terrible mistake for Columbia University 
to invite him to speak because he comes literally with blood on his 
hands--the blood of American soldiers who are being killed today in 
Iraq by Iraqi extremists trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard 
Corps, the Quds Force, in Iran at bases surrounding Tehran.
  But I offer this amendment in this spirit: If we are looking for a 
way to meaningfully respond to the presence of Ahmadi-Nejad in the 
United States, I cannot think of anything better than adopting this 
resolution which documents exactly the campaign of death and murder of 
Americans and others throughout the Middle East that it is carrying 
out.
  Regardless of where any individual Member of this Chamber stands on 
the war in Iraq and what the best way forward on the war in Iraq is, 
this matter of Iran's deadly role in Iraq and throughout the Middle 
East should draw us all together. This is a matter on which we are not 
for or against the war in Iraq, we are not Democrats or Republicans, we 
are Americans standing based of the evidence against a force, the 
Iranian Republican Guard Corps, the Quds Force, that has blood on its 
hands, and the blood is American blood.
  General Petraeus, 2 weeks ago, testified before Congress, and he 
could not have been clearer about the threat we face from Iran. In his 
words:

       It is increasingly apparent to both coalition and Iraqi 
     leaders that Iran, through the use of the Iranian Republican 
     Guard Corps Quds Force, seeks to turn the Shi'a militia 
     extremists into a Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests 
     and fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition 
     forces.

  General Petraeus's testimony is the latest in a growing dossier of 
evidence about Iranian terrorism--call it what it is. Ahmadi-Nejad is 
maybe called President; he is the terrorist dictator who, with a small 
group around him, has seized control of a great Nation, Iran--a growing 
dossier of evidence about Iranian terrorism in Iraq and throughout the 
region that we in this Chamber have received from our American military 
commanders on the ground in Iraq, from our top diplomats there, and 
from our own intelligence community.
  This is not opinion; this is fact. Specifically, we have received 
detailed information in recent months about how operatives from the 
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have been training--have been 
training--arming, funding, and even directing extremists inside Iraq. 
As Ambassador Crocker testified:

       While claiming to support Iraq in its transition, Iran has 
     actively undermined it by providing lethal capabilities to 
     the enemies of the Iraqi state.

  The IRGC, Quds Force, is also importing terrorists from the Lebanese 
Hezbollah to help build its extremist proxies in Iraq. We know this 
because coalition forces, American forces, have captured one of the 
Hezbollah leaders inside Iraq and recovered documents that detail the 
relationship between the Iranian regime and the extremist groups they 
are sponsoring who are killing Americans.
  General Petraeus said it when he was here:

       This is not intelligence. This is evidence.

  We also know Iran has been using its territory to train and organize 
these extremists, as I said. What is the source of that? The U.S. 
military spokesperson in Iraq, BG Kevin Bergner, U.S. Army. He has said 
groups of up to 60 Iraqi militants at a time have been taken to three 
camps near Tehran, where they received instruction in the use of 
mortars, rockets, improvised explosives, and other deadly tools of 
guerrilla warfare that they then use against our troops in Iraq.
  General Bergner also reported this summer the U.S. military has 
concluded that ``the senior leadership'' in Iran is aware of the 
activities of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in sponsoring 
attacks against our soldiers in Iraq, and that, in his words, it is 
``hard to imagine'' that the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali 
Khamenei, does not know about them.
  The consequences of this Iranian terrorism in Iraq have been immense 
and terrible for our men and women in uniform and for their families 
and friends at home. According to LTG Ray Odierno, the deputy commander 
of our forces in Iraq, Iranian-supplied weapons were responsible for a 
full one-third of American combat deaths this July. That builds on a 
similar record in preceding months. Let me repeat that. Up to a third 
of the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq in July were caused by 
sophisticated explosive devices used by people trained in Iran, with 
those devices supplied by Iran. This means the Iranians and their 
agents are killing our troops. Why are they doing it? Because they want 
us to retreat from Iraq.
  The Iranians understand--sometimes, it seems, better than a lot of 
Americans do--that if American power collapses in Iraq, if we retreat 
and abandon our allies and the hopes we share with them for a better 
future in Iraq and throughout the Middle East, our position throughout 
the region will become much weaker and Iran's position will become much 
stronger.
  Iranian aggression in Iraq fits squarely into a larger pattern of 
regional aggression, leading, they hope, to regional domination.

  Tehran is also training, funding, and equipping radical groups that 
are responsible for the deaths of Lebanese, Palestinians, Afghanis, and 
Israelis. They are attempting to destabilize a series of moderate 
regimes in the Arab world.
  Last week, Admiral Fallon, the commander of our Central Command, said 
the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is supplying anticoalition forces 
with the same sophisticated explosive devices it is giving to 
extremists in Iraq. In Admiral Fallon's words:

       There is no doubt . . . that agents from Iran are involved 
     in aiding the insurgency.

  The fact is, it is Iraq that today is the central front of Iran's 
efforts to become the hegemonic power in the Middle East. The Iranian 
regime knows Iraq has become the central front in our war with Islamist 
terrorism. It is where they believe they can begin the process of 
pushing us out of the region and seizing control. That is why I do not 
believe a person can be serious about responding to the threat of Iran 
while calling for our precipitous withdrawal from Iraq.
  Ahmadi-Nejad, a few weeks ago, said:

       The political power of the occupiers is collapsing rapidly.

  By that he means us.

       Soon we will see a huge power vacuum in the region. . . .We 
     are prepared to fill that gap.

  Asked about that statement, our own Ambassador Crocker said:

       Ahmadinejad means what he says, and is already trying to 
     implement it, to the best of his ability.

  That is a quote from our Ambassador in Baghdad.
  It is vital to the national security interests of the United States 
that the Iranian Government not be allowed to prevail in its war 
against us and the Iraqi people's hopes for a better future. The 
amendment Senator Kyl and I and others are offering, we believe, is an 
important component of our response to this threat.
  First, it will send a clear message both to the fanatical regime in 
Tehran--not, I believe, representative of the feelings and hopes of the 
Iranian people--and it will send a clear message to our allies in the 
region that the United States will not stand idly by and allow Iranian-
backed terrorists to kill hundreds of American soldiers. We will not 
stand idly by and allow Iran, through its proxies and then directly, to 
dominate Iraq.
  This amendment acknowledges what our military commanders and top 
diplomats are telling us, which is that regardless of what we might 
desire in Washington, the Government in Tehran has made a decision, and 
they are carrying it out--to wage a proxy war against the United States 
in Iraq and against our allies in the Arab world and Israel throughout 
the region. We must respond.
  Our amendment states it should be the policy of the United States to 
stop the violent activities and the destabilizing influence inside Iraq 
of the

[[Page S11971]]

Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as its foreign 
facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah and the indigenous Iraqi 
extremists.
  Our amendment recognizes that thwarting Iran's campaign of terror 
must be among the crucial considerations for any plan for the 
transition and drawdown of our forces in Iraq. As General Petraeus 
warned us in his testimony, the threat of Iran may, in the long run, 
prove an even greater danger to the stability of Iraq--their hopes for 
political reconciliation and self-government--than al-Qaida. We cannot 
ignore Iran.
  For that reason, the amendment Senator Kyl and I are offering calls 
on the State Department to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard 
Corps as a foreign terrorist organization and place the IRGC on the 
list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists. This is no small 
organization. I have seen estimates to say it is as large as 150,000 or 
180,000. They have ground troops. They have air capability. They even 
have naval assets. They have businesses which are doing business with 
other businesses throughout the region and the world.
  This is the organization that the evidence, presented to us by the 
American military intelligence communities, tells us is responsible for 
the murder of American soldiers in Iraq.
  They are launching terrorist attacks through their agents against our 
troops; therefore, they should be treated as terrorists. They must 
begin to suffer the economic and diplomatic punishments that come with 
being designated as a foreign terrorist organization.
  Of course, everyone in this Chamber would prefer that we find a way 
to convince the Iranian regime to stop these attacks against our 
soldiers, Iraqi soldiers, and civilians through negotiation, but 
reality requires that we recognize that we have tried to use the tools 
of diplomacy with Iran, Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad's government, and it has 
produced nothing.
  Since May, Ambassador Crocker, our Ambassador, has met three times 
with his Iranian counterparts in Baghdad--the highest level official 
meetings between American and Iranian representatives in decades--and 
what have these talks produced? These talks, at which our Ambassador 
has presented the Iranians with hard evidence that we know the IRGC, 
the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, is training Iraqi extremists who 
are coming back into Iraq and killing American soldiers--what has that 
evidence produced? Nothing. Nothing at all. In fact, there is some 
evidence that the Iranian activity is growing.
  In Ambassador Crocker's own words as he testified before Congress:

       I laid out the concerns we have over Iranian activity that 
     was damaging to Iraq's security, but found no readiness on 
     the Iranian side at all to engage seriously on these issues. 
     The impression I came away with after a couple of rounds is 
     that the Iranians were interested simply in the appearance of 
     discussions, of being seen to be at the table with the U.S. 
     as an arbiter of Iraq's present and future, rather than 
     actually doing serious business. Right now--

  Ambassador Crocker says--

     I haven't seen any signs of earnestness or seriousness on the 
     Iranian side.

  Far from convincing the Iranian regime to stop its proxy attacks on 
Iraqi soldiers, the evidence is that these attacks have escalated--
increased--over the last month. According to the most recent National 
Intelligence Estimate:

       Iran has been intensifying aspects of its lethal support--

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I wonder if I might ask unanimous 
consent for 3 additional minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. The war Iran is fighting against American troops and 
our allies in Iraq is an undeclared war, but it is, nonetheless, a real 
war in which real Americans and Iraqis are being murdered by Iranian 
agents. We cannot close our eyes to that outrageous reality. This 
amendment exposes that behavior and demands justice.
  As we speak, the President of Iran is in the United States. There is 
no better time than that for us to stand together, united as Americans, 
regardless of our position on Iraq or our party affiliation, and send a 
crystal clear message to Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad and the fanatical 
terrorists and tyrants who now run the great country of Iran and 
oppress its people that their campaign of terror against our troops in 
Iraq must end and we will stand united as Americans against it. Ahmadi-
Nejad should not be given any American platform to speak from until he 
acts to stop his government's killing of Americans. They have been 
shouting for almost three decades ``death to America.'' He leads those 
chants of tens of thousands in Iran today. But they have done more than 
shout; they have acted to bring that death to Americans in the marine 
barracks in Beirut, Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, and today in Iraq.
  Giving this evil and fanatical man a platform at a great American 
university is an insult to the hundreds of Americans whose blood he and 
his extremist allies in Iran have on their hands. He deserves no 
audience, no respect, no opportunity to explain away his hateful words 
and murderous actions. He and the ruling clique in Iran deserve the 
punishment, and more, this amendment Senator Kyl and I are introducing 
would impose on them as the terrorists they are.
  I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Arizona is 
recognized.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, first let me compliment my colleague from 
Connecticut, who is largely responsible for the idea of this amendment 
and much of the text of it, for his leadership over the years in trying 
to ensure we take appropriate action against Iran as it confronts 
America, both with regard to its nuclear program development as well 
as, more currently, its activities against our forces in Iraq. He has 
been truly inspirational, and I appreciate that leadership.
  The Senator from Connecticut has well laid out the case for this 
sense-of-the-Senate amendment that the U.S. Government should designate 
specifically the Islamic Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist 
organization and include it on the list of Specially Designated Global 
Terrorists. In addition, this sense-of-the-Senate amendment urges the 
use of our diplomatic and economic tools to pressure the Iranian regime 
not only to abandon its nuclear program but also to stop the use of its 
surrogates against our forces in Iraq.
  There have been only two questions raised about this amendment. I am 
hoping and expecting that it will receive very strong bipartisan 
support tomorrow, assuming we are able to vote on it tomorrow. The only 
two questions were, first of all, Can this be read in any way as an 
authorization of military action against Iran? I will assure my 
colleagues that is absolutely not our intention--in fact, quite the 
opposite. This is intended to obviate the necessity for such military 
conduct. Nobody wants to have to engage in military action against Iran 
directly, but what we would like to do is get them to stop killing our 
troops. One way to do that is to put economic pressure on the 
organization that is doing the killing, and that is what this amendment 
would ask the administration to do.

  Secondly, there is the question of whether the Islamic Revolutionary 
Guard is the appropriate entity to list on the Specially Designated 
Global Terrorists, and the answer to that is clearly yes. As I will 
point out in a moment, we have incontrovertible evidence that this is 
the group, as Senator Lieberman pointed out, that is causing the 
trouble.
  Some have said: Well, we should just designate the Quds Force of the 
Islamic Revolutionary Guard as the terrorist entity. That is like 
saying the Mafia isn't really responsible for what the Mafia does; it 
is only their hit men. The Quds Force is the group of hit men for this 
entity. This entity is clearly the overall entity responsible for this 
action, and it is the entity that engages in the economic activity 
which supplies the financial resources to the Quds Force. So it would 
not be adequate, obviously, just to designate the Quds Force, which is 
an arm of the Revolutionary Guard, as the terrorist entity.
  What evidence do we actually have that this is the entity of the 
Iranian

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Government that is doing all the dirty work? Well, there are many 
public statements, and I will quote from some of them. Senator 
Lieberman quoted some of them. There is also other information, as one 
might imagine, and my colleagues should be encouraged to consult with 
terrorist agencies if they have any questions about the specific 
involvement of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. But it is clear that 
this is the entity on which we should be focusing.
  Senator Lieberman quoted one of General Petraeus's statements in his 
testimony before the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Committee on 
Armed Services on September 10 that it is apparent Iran, through the 
use of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps--Quds Force--is causing this 
proxy war.
  Here is something else General Petraeus also recently stated:

       We know that it goes as high as Suleimani--

  And his full name is BG Qassem Suleimani--

     who is the head of the Quds Force of the Iranian Republican 
     Guards Corps. That is quite high level. We believe that he 
     works directly for the supreme leader of the country.

  There is a specific reference to the IRGC.
  In addition, Brigadier General Bergner, who is a spokesman for the 
Multi-National Force-Iraq, recently talked about the Quds Force 
operation in three camps near Teheran, and he said:

       The Quds Force, along with Hezbollah instructors, train 
     approximately 20 to 60 Iraqis at a time, sending them back to 
     Iraq organized into these special groups. They are being 
     taught how to use Explosively Formed Penetrators, mortars, 
     rockets, as well as intelligence, sniper and killing 
     operations. In addition to training, the Quds Force also 
     supplies the special groups with weapons and funding of 
     750,000 to 3 million U.S. dollars a month.

  Now, Senator Lieberman also referred to General Odierno. When I was 
in Iraq last, I was ushered into General Odierno's office to have a 
very candid discussion with him, and what an impressive military 
officer he is. He said: Come look at what I have on the table here, and 
he proceeded to show us a great deal of military hardware and described 
to us what it was. Essentially, it was all of the things--examples of 
many of the things they had found supplied by Iran, the weaponry that 
is killing American troops. On one, he said: Here, look at this. He 
said: You probably can't read Farsi, but this says, ``Made in Iran.'' 
Well, I accept his statement of what the Farsi says: ``Made in Iran.''
  He also showed us the earth penetrators. Before we went to Iraq, we 
were in Kuwait at the base from which a lot of our equipment has come 
back out of Iraq for repair or disposition, and I say ``disposition'' 
because some of it has been so devastated by the explosion of these 
weapons smuggled in from Iran that there is nothing much left of them. 
What was so impressive--or depressive--to see was to see the biggest, 
heaviest tank in the world, an Abrams tank, blown apart by these things 
as if it were a stick of dynamite in a tin can. The force and the 
destructive capability was almost beyond belief. We saw examples of 
that in General Odierno's office--a canister about this big with a 
concave shape in the middle that he said is the shaped charge that 
explodes up into the tank or the humvee or whatever the military 
vehicle is and devastates it. In any event, they have no doubt 
whatsoever that this equipment which is killing American troops is 
coming from Iran.
  The Department of Defense report to Congress entitled ``Measuring 
Stability and Security in Iraq'' that was just released on September 18 
of this year states:

       Most of the explosives and ammunition used by these groups 
     are provided by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard 
     Corps--Quds Force. For the period of June through the end of 
     August, the Explosively Formed Penetrator events--

  The equipment to which I just referred--

     are projected to rise by 39 percent over the period of March 
     through May.

  There is a very interesting story in Time magazine, a recent issue, 
quoting a former CIA explosive expert who still works in Iraq as saying 
that these explosively formed projectiles we are finding in Iran, that:

       The Iranians are making them. End of story.

  His argument is that only a state is capable of manufacturing these 
EFPs. In other words, these are manufactured by people officially 
connected with the government. They have access to the equipment and 
material and technology to make them. It is a complicated process that 
is involved in the making of the weapons I described.
  Incidentally, this same individual is convinced that the IRGC is 
helping Iraqi Shia militias sight in their mortars on the Green Zone, 
helping them to make sure they actually land on the Green Zone:

       The way they're dropping them in, in neat grids, tells me 
     all I need to know that the Shi'a are getting help. And 
     there's no doubt it's Iranian, the Islamic Revolutionary 
     Guard Corps.

  The investigations into these particular attacks, incidentally, were 
also discussed in an August 2005 Time report about an Iranian operative 
who headed a network of insurgents created, again, by the Islamic 
Revolutionary Guard Corps and that they began introducing these EFPs 
into the country at the beginning of that year. Abu Mustafa al-
Sheibani, an Iranian operative who headed a network of insurgents 
created by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, introduced the EFPs 
into the country in early 2007. U.S. military sources claimed to have 
captured EFPs that displayed the hallmarks of Iranian-manufactured 
weaponry.
  This is all IRGC. This is the entity which would be declared the 
terrorist group under our amendment.
  Ray Takehy, of the Council on Foreign Relations, recently said this--
I am speaking of the IRGC:

       They are heavily involved in everything from 
     pharmaceuticals to telecommunications and pipelines--even the 
     new Imam Khomeini Airport and a great deal of smuggling.

  I am going on to quote him:

       Many of the front companies engaged in procuring nuclear 
     technology are owned and run by the Revolutionary Guards. 
     They're developing along the lines of the Chinese military, 
     which is involved in many business enterprises. It's a huge 
     business conglomeration.

  This makes the point Senator Lieberman made before--that this 
Revolutionary Guard Corps is deeply involved in economic activity. They 
rely on financing for a lot of their activity. It is this vulnerability 
which causes us to believe that if they are listed as a state-sponsored 
terrorist group, we can, through the use of the sanctions that are 
available to us, inhibit and impede and ultimately stop their activity.
  The Revolutionary Guard Corps plays a key role in the military 
industries in Iran. According to Anthony Cordesman, who is a 
distinguished expert in this area and who is currently with the Center 
for Strategic and International Studies, they have been involved in the 
attempted acquisition of nuclear weapons and surface-to-surface 
missiles, among other things.
  Interestingly, also, the unanimously passed U.N. Security Council 
resolutions sanctioning Iran have listed several IRGC entities as being 
involved in Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activities.
  Finally, the UNSCR resolutions list high-ranking IRGC personnel for 
their involvement in these programs, including the deputy commander of 
the IRGC, the chief of the IRGC joint staff, the commanders of IRGC 
ground forces, the commander of the IRGC Navy, the commander of the 
Basij Resistance Force, the commander of the Quds Force, and the Deputy 
Interior Minister for Security Affairs, who is also an IRGC officer.
  I note that these resolutions, 1737 and 1747, which were immediately 
implemented by our European partners, have not yet been fully 
implemented by our own Treasury Department.
  I cite all of this evidence and these quotations to simply make the 
point that there is absolutely no doubt that it is the IRGC that is 
involved in these activities against our American forces and is 
responsible for their deaths in Iraq. It is the IRGC that needs to be 
named to the Specially Designated Global Terrorist list. I misspoke 
before and said the state-sponsored list. I meant the Specially 
Designated Global Terrorist list.
  By being so listed, we can employ our financial and immigration 
sanctions,

[[Page S11973]]

which could include them potentially blocking assets and even the 
prosecution of supporters who would provide funding to them. It could 
also involve refusal of visas and deportations of members. It would 
allow us to block the assets--in the United States--of any foreign 
company doing business with them, in effect, cutting them out of 
American markets.
  Any lesser sanctions, such as focusing on the Quds Force, would not 
in any way solve the problem. That is like the hit men for the Mafia; 
you have to get to the Mafia.
  We cannot settle for symbolism. This is serious. As I said, finally--
and this is my last point--our resolution should not be read as an 
authorization for the use of force. I think we might even be changing a 
couple words in it to make that crystal clear. That was not our 
intention. To the extent that anybody might try to use that as an 
excuse for not supporting it, you will not have that excuse. We took 
out a couple of phrases that were pointed out as potentially offering 
that degree of support. This is not such an authorization for the use 
of military action. This is designed to prevent that. So if your 
concern is that we might ultimately be forced--or some people might 
believe we might be forced--to take action against Iran, and you want 
to void that result, this kind of economic sanction is within our power 
as Americans. We don't have to rely upon anybody else in the world to 
do it; we can do that. We know it can hurt them, and it goes to the 
entity causing harm to our forces and, therefore, we believe it is an 
appropriate action for the administration to take.
  This would put the Senate on record as urging the administration to 
take this action as soon as possible, so we can end the actions of the 
IRGC.
  I compliment my colleague from Connecticut again for his leadership 
and sponsorship of the resolution. I hope tomorrow we will vote on it 
and our colleagues will be supportive of it.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Tennessee is 
recognized.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be added as 
a cosponsor to the legislation offered by the Senator from Connecticut 
and the Senator from Arizona.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I compliment them for their leadership 
on this important issue.
  I ask unanimous consent that the debate time for the energy and 
resources conference report be preserved.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

                          ____________________