[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 76 (Thursday, May 8, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H3320-H3325]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. SHERMAN. Madam Speaker, I thank the leadership for allocating 1
hour to me of floor time.
As a senior member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and as Chair of
the Subcommittee on Terrorism and Nonproliferation, I will take the
next hour to focus on our foreign policy and to see whether it is
focused correctly on the threats that face us in the first quarter of
the 21st century. Then, if time permits, I will discuss an issue--some
would say a threat--that will face us in the second and third quarters
of the 21st century.
Madam Speaker, I believe that our foreign policy has been adrift
since the end of the Cold War because we have
[[Page H3321]]
been unable and unwilling to prioritize. Our national case of ADD
forces us to focus on whatever international objective flits across our
consciousness.
We have an enormous national ego which causes us to believe that we
can simultaneously and successfully pursue all our objectives, and that
we can defeat evil everywhere we choose to notice it. As a Nation, we
punish politicians and pundits who dare to deflate our enormous
national ego.
Our bureaucracy opposes any effort to prioritize our objectives
because that effort conflicts with the bureaucratic imperative to
please every one of its bureaus. Imagine having to go to the Moldova
desk in the State Department and say that Moldova's sovereignty over
its Transdniestra region cannot be a major national priority. The State
Department is pretty much on autopilot, with each of its bureaus
focusing on the bureau's function, the bureau's priority, with no one
setting overall national priorities.
As a Nation, we have sacrificed 4,000 of our finest, and untold
treasure. We did so in Iraq because our leaders told us it was
necessary in order to protect ourselves from weapons of mass
destruction, weapons that did not exist. But just because we are able
to sacrifice treasure and lives to protect ourselves from a nuclear
program that did not exist does not mean that we can sacrifice our
national ego and our bureaucratic imperatives to focus on real threats
that do exist.
Now, in addition to these long-standing institutional and
psychological barriers to prioritization, at present we face three
practical barriers that also prevent us from focusing on the national
threats that we should really focus on, that we should give our
priority to. The first of these is our unhealthy fixation on Iraq. This
fixation began with President Bush. It now afflicts us all.
Now, we are told that morally we must stay in Iraq because we ``broke
it,'' but we are told this by the same people who rightfully point out
that whatever shape Iraq is in today and whatever shape we leave it in
is still superior to where it was under Saddam. Remember, Saddam killed
hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis through his policies.
We're told we must stay in Iraq because we risk a humanitarian problem
if we leave, while at the same time this Nation ignores actual
humanitarian holocausts that are going on in places like Somalia, Chad
and Congo. Those humanitarian holocausts don't count because CNN isn't
there. And CNN isn't there because our troops aren't there. So our
troops must stay in Iraq because CNN is in Iraq, and CNN is in Iraq
because our troops are in Iraq. So we must stay there because we are
there. This is no way to prioritize our foreign policy.
We are told that if we leave Iraq, terrorists could meet there and
plot against us. Imagine how big a national ego we must have to think
that we could possibly deprive our enemies of a conference room. The
fact is that terrorists can and do plot against us in Somalia, in
Yemen, in countless other places, but of course these don't count
because CNN isn't there. Remember, however, that 9/11 was plotted in an
apartment building in Hamburg, Germany, which makes you wonder why we
are staying in Iraq to make sure that terrorists don't have a place to
plot against us. So our fixation with Iraq prevents us from
prioritizing our foreign policy, prioritizing the need to protect
Americans from nuclear attack. But that is just one of the obstacles we
face.
The second obstacle we face is an unhealthy fixation on our
reflexive, unthinking and implacable anti-Russian attitude. Now, I
don't mind being anti-Russian. I do mind being implacably,
unthinkingly, and reflexively anti-Russian. Now, part of this stems
from our great national hubris. Our foreign policy establishment
doesn't like Mr. Putin or his so-called successor, and we don't think
that we should have to accommodate anybody we don't like. The fact is
that sometimes you do have to do business with people you don't like if
you want to carry out a reasonable, prioritized foreign policy. Our
politicians tell us that we are at war. Well, the last truly great
wartime leader of the United States was President Roosevelt, and he did
business with Putin's most venal predecessor.
Now, this reflexive, anti-Russian attitude grew up in large part
because of the individuals who are making our foreign policy decisions
today. These are people who spent their lives planning and studying and
writing their theses on how to surround and defeat the Soviet Union.
Old habits die hard, but yesterday's priorities should not dictate
tomorrow's priorities.
Now, Putin has given us much to be angry about, but let us take a
look at whether this new Cold War, at worst, or very cold peace, at
best, started with Moscow or started in Washington.
Now, one issue that has faced us throughout foreign policy is the
doctrinal battle between the doctrines of self-determination and
territorial integrity. Self-determination, the right of a group of
people within a country to split up, split off, and form their own
country; territorial integrity, the right of a nation to continue to
have and to possess and to control its territory.
In fact, the two great wars fought on American soil were on opposite
sides of this doctrinal distinction. Our first great war on our own
soil was our war for self-determination, our war for independence. The
second great war was the war to protect our territorial integrity from
those who sought southern independence. So we have been on both sides
of this doctrinal divide. We face this same divide now, territorial
integrity versus self-determination.
Let us examine eight places in the general neighborhood of Russia
where this doctrinal conflict has come up. You see, we are for self-
determination of Kosovo just as we were for the self-determination of
the Slovenes and the Croats, which led to the split up of Yugoslavia,
and we were for the self-determination of the various republics that
made up the Soviet Union. Four times that we were for self-
determination--Kosovo, Slovenia, Croatia, and the Soviet Union itself.
But we are against self-determination and instead for territorial
integrity in at least four areas also close to Russia. We are against
self-determination of the Transdniestra region of Moldova. We are
against self-determination for the northern part of Kosovo that would
like to self-determine itself out of Kosovo and rejoin Serbia. And we
are against self-determination for two regions of the Republic of
Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Eight conflicts; four times we
support self-determination, four times we support territorial
integrity.
Some would say we are inconsistent. This is not the case. We are
consistently anti-Russian; consistently, unthinkingly, and reflexively
anti-Russian. In all eight of these conflicts, Russia had a strong
interest. In most of these conflicts, we had virtually no interest. Who
amongst our constituents talks to us about Abkhazia or South Ossetia?
Yet every time, in all eight instances, we took a very strong and
determined anti-Russian position.
We also have a conflict with Russia over the proposal to build a
missile defense system in the Czech Republic and in Poland.
{time} 1845
Russia believes that we are rushing to install these installations to
create anti-Russian facts on the ground in Eastern Europe. Our position
is that those missile defenses will protect Europe from a possible
Iranian nuclear-tipped missile. But the Europeans don't particularly
want our missile defense system. We have to bribe the Czechs and the
Poles to let us put them there. The Germans and the French would just
as soon we not build them.
Why are we taking this aggressively anti-Russian position? One would
say that the goal is to protect Europe from Iranian nuclear weapons.
But wait a minute. We have not even tried to bargain with Russia, to
seek their help in preventing Iran from getting the nuclear weapons in
the first place. Perhaps in return for not building a missile defense
system, we could achieve greater cooperation from Moscow in stopping
Iran's nuclear program. But we are unwilling to prioritize. We have as
a priority creating anti-Russian facts on ground in the Czech Republic
and Poland; and, accordingly, we cannot sacrifice the opportunity to
build missile defense systems in those countries just to get Moscow's
critical help in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
I could give you a number of other examples. Let me just focus on
one,
[[Page H3322]]
and that is the recent commercial disputes between Ukraine and Russia.
In those disputes we have told these two groups of former Communists of
these formerly Communist countries that it is wrong to sell goods, in
this case, natural gas, for its fair market value. We have told former
Communists that capitalism is wrong. Why? Because capitalism would
allow Russia to get more for its natural gas, and our tendency to be
reflexively anti-Russian exceeds our tendency to support capitalism. So
we face a second practical block to prioritizing our foreign policy,
and that is our instinctively anti-Russian attitude.
But we also face a third block to prioritization, which is our
failure to recognize how important it is to get the support of world
opinion, particularly opinion in Western Europe, in order to achieve
what should be our number one national priority, which is protecting
the American people from nuclear weapons.
Now, think back to 9/11. We had the sympathy of the whole world.
People were ready to follow our leadership. People demonstrated in
favor of America in places where they had not demonstrated in favor of
America before or since. But then what did we do? We ignored Kyoto. We
invaded Iraq. We disdained the International Court of Justice. We built
Guantanamo. We angered our friends and our allies with unilateral
approaches on the wrong set of issues. Today, who would say that the
United States has the support or the sympathy of the world? We need to
prioritize. The real threat is nuclear weapons in the wrong hands.
Now, I am going to avoid using the term ``weapons of mass
destruction'' because that has been a phony and misleading term. It
puts nuclear weapons in the same category as chemical or biological
weapons. Only nuclear weapons could kill millions of Americans.
Now, I don't want this speech to be too depressing. We are
vulnerable. We are institutionally and psychologically unable to focus
on how to reduce our vulnerability. But we are still far safer than we
have been at other times in our history. In the 1960s we faced a far
greater threat. At that time we faced the risk of thousands of Soviet
nuclear weapons, 10 megatons or more each. Now we face less than one
five-hundredth the arsenal of the Soviet Union in terms of number and
less than one five-hundredth in terms of the strength of each nuclear
device. So we are far safer now than we were when we, as baby boomers,
as elementary school students, were ducking under our desks in air raid
drills in order to learn how to protect ourselves from a massive Soviet
nuclear attack.
Now, let us say that we could overcome our obstacles to a rational,
prioritized foreign policy. What would be our response to the nuclear
threat that we face? There are four possible responses to a nuclear
threat: Prevention, deterrence, interception, and survival. I will deal
briefly with the last three of these and then focus on the first,
prevention. And by ``prevention'' I mean preventing the wrong people
from getting the most powerful weapons.
Now, deterrence and interception are, I think, false hopes because
they miss the mark on the delivery system that is most likely to be
used by those who wish us harm. For 20 and 30 years, we have talked on
this floor about Star Wars or national missile defense, how we're going
to hit a bullet with a bullet in outer space. Maybe someday it will
work. But missile defense can be rendered irrelevant. It doesn't take a
rocket scientist to deliver a nuclear weapon to an American city. A
nuclear weapon is a bit smaller than a person, in most cases. You could
smuggle one inside a bale of marijuana.
Now, we have had a lot of talk on this floor about how to make our
borders more secure and deal with the issue of illegal immigration. To
date, our efforts have increased the fee charged by the so-called
coyotes to smuggle an illegal immigrant into the United States up from
$1,000 to $1,500. This may have a substantial impact on those people
who aspire to work in the United States for minimum wage. But whether
the cost of bringing in something the size of a person is $1,000 or
$10,000 or $100,000 is not going to matter much to the Iran
Revolutionary Guard Corps. We are not going to have borders so secure
that a truly sophisticated terrorist group or intelligence agency will
not be able to bring a bomb across our borders. Keep in mind we have
300 million legal border crossings every year. We have zero patrol
officers, zero on the entire border between Alaska and Canada. Between
Canada and the lower 48, we have roughly one security official every 30
or 40 miles, and that person is only working 8 hours a day. So
smuggling a nuclear weapon will not be difficult for any adversary
sophisticated enough to get its hands on a nuclear weapon in the first
place.
Not only is smuggling easier, it gives the perpetrator plausible
deniability. If you send an intercontinental ballistic missile into the
United States, we will know where it came from. On the other hand, if
you smuggle one here, you can always deny that you did it or leave some
plausible deniability, and deterrence will be undermined, and, as is
obvious, interception is made irrelevant if weapons are smuggled into
the United States.
Now, I know that the great dictators really want an intercontinental
ballistic missile. It's the Viagra of tyrants. But as a practical
matter, our enemies will determine that smuggling a nuclear weapon
makes more sense for them. It provides them with plausible deniability
to deter deterrence. It makes irrelevant all of our missile defenses.
The other problem with deterrence is that Iran may not be deterrable,
and I will get to that in just a few minutes.
So I have dealt with deterrence and interception. Let us turn to
survival, civil defense. This is a subject you are not allowed to talk
about on the House floor or anywhere else in polite society. The First
Amendment protects many kinds of speech but not talking about civil
defense because you have to turn to Americans and say your government
may not be able to protect you from nuclear attack. We may be in a
circumstance where we can reduce casualties from 200,000 down to
100,000. Our problem is that the American electorate finds the death of
even 100 Americans to be unthinkable.
Now, we could cut casualties in half or by more than half if we
prepare civil defense. But if a nuclear weapon the size of the one
tested by North Korea went off at the White House, about 2 miles away,
the people in this room would survive, but none of us would know what
to do or where to turn for information. Should we shelter in place?
Should we flee, and if so, in what direction? We need a system to tell
Americans what to do. And we have to take Americans into our confidence
and tell them that this is a real threat, that we are working to reduce
the threat, and that we are working to prepare for the threat.
Now, I know that survival is something that we dealt with in the
1960s when we did those bomb drills I was talking about. What might
have been absurd when we did it is now laughed at when it would be
useful because in the 1960s, had we been hit by our adversary, it might
well have been a thousand 10-megaton weapons. No one could have
received medical care. There would be no relief into the city from
outside the city. The living would envy the dead.
In contrast, Iran might develop one or two 15-kiloton weapons, 1 to 2
percent the size of the weapons of the Soviet Union, less than 1
percent of the number. We would be able to bring in medical care from
outside. We should talk about it. We should plan for it. But I know
that no politician or pundit is allowed to do so; so I will stop and
instead shift to a discussion of prevention, keeping nuclear weapons
out of the worst hands.
Now, I know that we should prevent the worst regimes and
organizations from obtaining nuclear weapons. How do we do that?
Maximum carrots, maximum sticks, maximum focus. We need to prioritize.
We need to maximize our options. And, finally, maximum linkage, by
which I mean connecting our objective of deterring a nuclear Iran or a
nuclear North Korea with objectives that are important to other
countries, not only North Korea and Iran themselves but Russia and
China.
Let's first look at North Korea. I think North Korea is less
important than Iran because North Korea is not ambitious. It wishes
only to survive and to oppress its people in its own territory. What we
need in order to deal with North Korea is the carrot of offering a
nonaggression pact, a treaty in
[[Page H3323]]
which we would agree not to invade North Korea.
That's what the North Koreans have asked for. If the North Koreans
are going to get rid of their nuclear weapons, you would think at a
minimum they would want a promise from the United States that we're
never going to invade. Believe it or not, the American response has
been no. Why? Because the neocons never want to give up their dream of
invading North Korea. This has made progress at the six-party talks
uncertain at best. We are unable to prioritize our need to eliminate
North Korea's nuclear weapons program over the psychological need of
neocons to dream of invading North Korea. Instead, we need maximum
carrots for the North Korean regime if they will verifiably and
permanently get rid of their entire nuclear program.
We also need maximum sticks. We don't have many sticks. China has the
sticks. North Korea is utterly dependent on Chinese aid, and yet we
have failed to use linkage. In all our discussions with China, we have
told them that our attitudes toward trade and their currency
manipulation will not be affected by their attitudes on
nonproliferation. We are a nation that has lost 4,000 lives to protect
us from Saddam's nuclear program that did not exist, but we are
unwilling to link our policy on currency values to China's behavior
with regard to weapons, not weapons of mass destruction, but the real
important ones, the nuclear weapons.
Our State Department opposes linkage because they find it more
convenient to just deal with one issue at a time in separate bureaus,
in separate boxes. We need to link China's policies toward
proliferation with our policies on issues important to China.
{time} 1900
Now let's turn to Iran. Iran is more dangerous than North Korea
because it is ambitious. It is already responsible for terrorist
attacks as far away as Buenos Aires, which is as far as you can get
from Tehran. It seeks to remake the Muslim world and then the entire
world. An Iran with nuclear weapons is truly dangerous.
Let's go through all the different ways it imperils the United
States. First, an Iran with nuclear weapons means that you can say
goodbye to the nonproliferation regime which has restricted the number
of nuclear states since 1945. The Gulf Cooperation Council or Saudi
Arabia acting individually will certainly develop nuclear weapons if
Iran does. Egypt will not be far behind. And once nuclear weapons
become popular for medium-sized countries and countries that do not
face existential threats to their existence, once nuclear weapons
become something that every country the size of Egypt has, how do you
say no to Nigeria or Brazil?
Not only would we lose the nonproliferation regime, but what affect
would it have on Iran's policies? Imagine terrorism with impunity. Iran
is already rated by our State Department as the number one state
sponsor of terrorism. Imagine what happens if Iran has nuclear weapons.
It puts us in a position where we cannot respond, even if we know that
Iran is responsible for terrible terrorist acts.
Now not only do you provide impunity for Iran to engage in terrorism,
but you put us for the first time since the end of the Cold War eyeball
to eyeball with a hostile and aggressive nuclear power. You are going
to end up with a Cuban missile crisis every week, or at least several a
year. Whether it is IEDs smuggled from Iran into Iraq or whether it is
Iranian gunboats challenging American ships in the Persian Gulf, Iran
will provoke us and will test us. We will go eyeball to eyeball with a
regime considerably less sane than the regime presided over by
Khrushchev.
Now even if we survive dozens of confrontations with a hostile
nuclear Iran, there may come a day, and we pray for this day, when the
Iranian Government will see itself about to be overthrown. Do you think
those mullahs are going to imitate the Soviet Communists, shrug their
shoulders and walk off the world stage? Gorbachev wrote a book and went
on a speaking tour. Do you think that is what is going to happen? No.
If these extremists in Tehran feel that they are about to be
overthrown, among their options will be to use their nuclear weapons
against Israel in an effort to regain popularity on the streets of
Tehran or to use their weapons on the United States figuring if they
are going to go out, they might as well go out with a bang.
Now I know that there was that NIE, that National Intelligence
Estimate, released late last year that was deliberately designed to be
misread. It said that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weaponization
program. But if you read that report carefully, and I am not talking
about the classified version, which I wouldn't talk about here, but
just the two-page unclassified version, if you read it carefully, if
you read the footnote, you realize that the real bottom line in that
report is that Iran is well on target to have a nuclear weapon by the
middle of next decade.
You see, the key difficulty in producing a nuclear weapon is to get
your hands on the fissile material. And the NIE says that Iran will
likely have that fissile material by the middle of next decade. Now the
easier part of building a nuclear weapon is to take that fissile
material and do the engineering work to turn it into a weapon. This is
called ``weaponization.'' The NIE, this big national intelligence
report which got headlines around the world, says that for at least a
while, Iran seems to have stopped its weaponization program. But what
does that mean? The weaponization program could be completed in just a
year, year and a half. There is no reason for Iran to build the cart if
they are still breeding the horse. All they have to do is continue to
create the fissile material and then restart their weaponization
program even a year or two from now and they will be well on target to
have a nuclear weapon by the middle of next decade.
So how do we know that they are developing the fissile material
technology? Because this is the one thing the whole world agrees on.
The centrifuges are turning at Natanz. Iran says so. And they brought
in the IAEA to look at it, and the IAEA says so. And Bush says so.
Iran's enemies and Iran's friends say so. And we have seen the
pictures. Iran is creating the technology to enrich uranium and create
that fissile material.
Of course, Iran says it is all about generating peaceful electricity.
Wait a minute. Iran, as we know, creates an awful lot of petroleum. As
a byproduct of pumping petroleum, you often get natural gas. Iran has
no way to export that natural gas. That natural gas is a useless
byproduct. Iran flares the natural gas. Iran flares enough natural gas
to generate more electricity than you could generate at ten Bushehr-
style reactors. Well, if you have free flared natural gas, that is by
far the cheapest way to generate electricity. But Iran isn't interested
so much in generating electricity. They are interested in pursuing
their nuclear program to create the fissile material which is the most
essential element of creating a nuclear weapon. So Iran is developing
the fissile material needed for a bomb.
Now there are those who say that our response should be a military
response. They point out that Saddam Hussein's real nuclear program was
destroyed by Israel in 1981. Saddam put it all in one place, above
ground, easy to see. Syria made a similar mistake. They put their whole
program, or the essential elements of that program, all in one place,
above ground. They tried to make it a little bit more difficult to see.
And if news reports are to be credited, that program was destroyed late
last year by an Israeli bombing effort.
The Iranians are not nearly so incompetent. Their program is
dispersed. It is underground. And it is hidden from our intelligence
assets. A military strike would not destroy their whole program. It
would set them back a few years. It would also cause a number of
problems. But even if you believe that a military strike is a good
idea, we ought to first exhaust our nonlethal alternatives if for
nothing else than out of a decent respect for the opinion of the world.
I will talk about those nonlethal alternatives in a second. But I
want to respond to those who take the other approach and say, well,
shouldn't we pass a law here in Congress to prohibit any bombing of
Iran's nuclear facilities? That is, I think, a mistake. I call it
Ambien for Ahmadinejad. It would help him sleep better.
There is no reason for us to tell the Iranians that we have taken any
of our
[[Page H3324]]
options off the table. In fact, the more reasonable Iranian leaders
will tell their colleagues that one of the reasons to give up the
nuclear program is that in the end, it may be destroyed by an American
bombing raid before it bears fruit. So you strengthen the hand of the
realists in Tehran if you leave all options on the table.
But now let's focus on those nonlethal options. We have got to get a
message through to the Iranian elites and the Iranian people. And that
message is very simple. You face total economic and diplomatic
isolation unless you verifiably and permanently give up your
nuclear weapons program. Well, we have the broadcasting resources to
get this message through. Radio Farda is broadcasting into Iran right
now. Why can't we get this message through? Because I can't lie that
well in Farsi. The real facts are that Iran faces nothing close to
economic or diplomatic isolation if it continues its nuclear program.
They face only the tiniest sanctions, and they can do business as usual
with the entire world.
So what do we do to create the reality so that we can truthfully tell
the Iranian people and Iranian elites that they must give up their
nuclear program or they face economic and diplomatic isolation? Well,
before I go forward, when we talk about the Iranian economy, we must
recognize that special debt of gratitude we owe to Iran's mullahs whose
mismanagement, corruption and oppression have made Tehran vulnerable to
economic pressure even in a $130-a-barrel world. So what do we do?
What have we done? First on the economic side, and then on the
diplomatic side. Now there was great fanfare on October 21 of last year
when we announced big sanctions on Iran until you realized there was
virtually nothing there. The first part of that sanction was to ban
four Iranian banks. We had banned some of them earlier, bringing to a
total of four the number of Iranian banks that were not allowed to
execute transactions with the New York branch of the United States
Federal Reserve. That means large dollar transactions, including oil
sales, will either have to be executed through other Iranian banks or
through non-Iranian banks or priced in euros rather than dollars. The
most this could possibly do is to cut maybe one-tenth of 1 percent of
Iran's oil revenue at very worst. And that is if many of the European
banks really hit them with huge fees.
The fact is that there are plenty of banking channels. Iran can
easily shift, and has shifted, to selling its oil for dollars. Instead
it sells for Euros. And there are many ways that they can do dollar
transactions if they want to. We have not taken the step of even
banning all Iranian banks from doing business with the Federal Reserve
Board because we have been unwilling to inconvenience international
corporations even in that slight way.
We also announced rather recently that we would put the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorist list. And for a few hours,
people said what does that mean? Does that mean that if Mercedes
chooses to sell trucks to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps that
the United States might shut down Mercedes operations in the United
States? Two hours later, the Treasury issued a press release saying
they had no intention of pursuing secondary sanctions. What that means
is that every European company is free to do business with the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps any way they want without facing any
consequences in the United States.
So what should we be doing? The good news and the bad news is that we
have a lot of tools in our economic toolbox. The good news is we have
got tools in the toolbox. The bad news is we have known of this threat
for a decade, and we have left our tools in the toolbox, except for,
you know, a little screwdriver we have used to have the slightest
possible effect.
{time} 1915
The first thing we should do is follow the law. We should enforce the
Iran Sanctions Act. Now, the Iran Sanctions Act was formerly known as
the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act.
We used the sanctions against Libya, we forced Qaddafi to change his
behavior, he gave up his nuclear program, we dropped Libya from the
act, we renamed the act, and we resumed our policy of never applying it
against Iran.
Since 1998, despite overwhelming evidence, we haven't taken the first
step we are supposed to take under the Iran Sanctions Act, but what are
we supposed to do? The purpose of the act is to deter companies from
investing $20 million or more in the Iran oil sector.
The first step in that is for us to take note of which companies have
invested $20 million in the Iran oil sector, and that triggers the act.
At that point, the President is supposed to impose sanctions on that
firm or at least name them and shame them and then waive the sanctions.
Minimum compliance with the law requires the President to at least name
the companies that we know are investing $20 million or more in the
Iran oil sector.
What has actually happened? The State Department, the Administration,
refuses to open its copy of the Wall Street Journal on any day in which
there is an announcement of an additional significant investment in the
Iran oil sector.
I had to turn to CRS, the Congressional Research Service, to give me
a chart of all of the large investments being made in the Iran oil
sector. We have got not just one chart, we have got another chart. But
if you ask the State Department to name even one company that is
investing, they will say we refuse to speak. Why? Because they don't
even want to acknowledge that the investment is being made. That would
trigger the act.
This is like hiring a police officer who disagrees with the law, a
narcotics officer who just walks around and everybody is using whatever
drugs, and this officer does nothing--what good is to pass the law if
the Executive Branch refuses to apply it?
Now, we have a bill that has passed this House, it's stymied by
Republicans in the Senate, it is opposed by the Administration, it's
called the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act. What does this legislation
do? The legislation strengthens the Iran Sanctions Act, it imposes a
total embargo on imports to the United States of Iran's goods.
Believe it or not, we import from Iran. We don't import oil, we only
import the stuff they don't need and they would have trouble selling
anywhere else, caviar and carpets, et cetera.
The bill we would pass through this House would at least turn to Iran
and say well you can't sell those goods here in the United States,
which would have a significant impact on some of the most powerful
families and clans in Iran, particularly those that play a decisive
role in their government.
The Iran Counter-Proliferation Act would also end the obscene
practice of U.S. oil companies doing business with Iran through their
foreign subsidiaries. So far that bill remains bottled up, in large
part because the Administration opposes it. The same Administration
that refuses to enforce the existing law.
What about the World Bank? The World Bank has lent some $1.36 billion
to Iran since Iran began its nuclear weapons program. Some $700 million
of that hasn't been disbursed yet, but the United States has done
nothing to prevent those loans from being authorized or the funds
disbursed, except one thing.
The Administration cast a token vote at the World Bank knowing they
would be outvoted, and they only did that because it was required by
law. At least they followed the law. They are willing to follow the law
when it's utterly inconsequential.
To date, the Secretary of the Treasury has refused to even call any
of his counterparts in European capitals to urge them to withdraw their
support for these World Bank loans.
Now, why are these World Bank loans so important? Because we know
what it takes to stay in power. One of the things it takes is
delivering projects to people, bringing home the bacon, if you will.
Now, I know it's not kosher, it's not Halal, but it is what Iranian
politicians around the world do. Imagine what it is for them to cut the
ribbon on a water project and say we have given this to you. That's
enough to help them stay in power just a little bit. But imagine how
much more meaningful it is when they say the whole world, the World
Bank, has sent us this money. This is proof that the United States can
do nothing to hurt us. This
[[Page H3325]]
is proof that the whole world is on our side about developing nuclear
weapons.
The World Bank loans to Iran are harmful not just from an economic
perspective, they are harmful to us from a political perspective as
well. We should change our laws dealing with Federal procurement, State
procurement and Federal corporate assistance to achieve one thing. We
should turn to any corporation seeking a big contract with the Federal
Government or seeking the assistance of any of our programs designed to
help business, whether it be the Export-Import Bank or a whole host of
other programs.
We should ask the other question, does your corporation or any of its
affiliates invest in the Iran oil sector, loan money to the Iranian
government, sell munitions to the Iranian government? Imagine the
effect this will have if we make it clear that if you are a Nebraska
corporation owned by an Italian corporation, and the Italian
corporation is investing in the oil sector of Iran, that means we are
not going to give you the contract, we will give it to somebody else.
A number of States have tried to do this, and they have been
threatened by the Federal Government. We have passed through this
House, and it has made it through the Foreign Relations Committee in
the Senate, a bill dealing with OPIC, the most unfortunately titled
Federal agency, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and said
that if you want the assistance of this agency, you have to certify
that neither your corporation nor any of its affiliates are engaging in
those wrongful transactions with the Iranian government. Clearly, we
should not be giving assistance to those who are aiding Iran's nuclear
program or aiding the Iranian government in one of the key pressure
point areas, munitions, investment in the oil sector, loans to the
government.
Now we have the issue of divestiture. We need to encourage private
investors and government pension plans and private pension plans to
sell their stock in corporations that are engaging in those
transactions with the Iranian government, investments in the oil
sector, loans to the government, sale of munitions.
A number of States, especially the State of Florida, my own State of
California, have decided to divest from such companies. But when they
do so, they face frivolous lawsuits, lawsuits from people saying, ``oh,
you have to invest for the maximum possible return, and you can't think
of national interest when you do so.''
Now, get this, because my colleagues have seen how the Administration
has been opposed to frivolous lawsuits and any lawsuit they claim is
frivolous, they have been against lawsuits on everything except one
thing, they are in favor of frivolous lawsuits against State
governments who choose to divest, against private pension plans that
choose to divest. Why? Because their hatred of trial lawyers is
exceeded by their hatred of investors who would try to influence the
very companies in which they have made an investment.
It is absolutely shameful for us to make it more difficult for good
Americans to push the companies that they partially own into doing the
right thing. We should go further.
Later this month, I will introduce legislation to change our tax code
so that those who are divesting from companies doing business in those
bad areas, as I have identified, or those areas we would like to
discourage with regard to Iran, we will say, if you sell your stock in
such a company, and reinvest the proceeds in a company that is clean,
then you should get a carryover basis. We are not going to use that as
a taxable event, because divestiture should be encouraged, not taxed.
We need to turn to all the corporations in the world and say do not
invest in the Iran oil sector, do not lend money to that government, do
not sell the munitions, otherwise, we will encourage our companies, we
will encourage our investors, we will encourage our pension plans, we
will encourage our individual investors to stop investing in your
company. We will not give aid to any of your subsidiaries, and we will
not make them eligible for Federal contracts. This will provide real
pressure on the Iranian government.
But that's just the economic toolbox. We also have the diplomatic
toolbox as well. It is even more powerful, it is even less used. We
have never offered Russia anything in return for real cooperation on
the issue of Iran's nuclear program. We have not provided linkage
between issues Russia cares about and what we care about, which ought
to be preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
We have made it clear to Russia that what we do with regard to
Chechnya, Abkhazia, Moldova, Estonia or anything else is not linked to
what Russia does with regard to Iran.
Likewise, we have made it clear to China that what we do with regard
to Taiwan or currency manipulation or trade will have nothing to do
with what China does in the U.N. or elsewhere with regard to Iran's
nuclear program.
If we could get Russia and China to support us at the U.N., then
instead of stupid little sanctions designed to fool people around the
world, we could get real U.N. sanctions. What would that mean? Imagine
a U.N. ban on sending refined oil products into Iran. Now, Iran has
plenty of petroleum, but they don't have the refinery capacity. They
import nearly half of the gasoline they burn.
If the United Nations would prohibit every country in the world from
sending them that refined petroleum, you would have an immediate impact
on the streets of Tehran. You would be able then to turn to the Iranian
people, to turn to the Iranian elites and say that you, indeed, face
economic and diplomatic isolation unless you abandon your nuclear
weapons program.
We need to prioritize. We need to link what is important to us to
what is important to others. We need to use all the tools in our
toolbox, and we need to use them immediately. Otherwise, we will not
achieve the level of security from nuclear attack that the American
people deserve.
I am not saying that we can make America invulnerable, but I am
saying that it is our duty here in the Federal Government and as
foreign policymakers to do everything we can to achieve that objective.
I have concluded. I did mention that I would perhaps talk about
threats that face us in the second and third quarters of the 21st
century. I will leave that to another speech. I yield back.
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