[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 168 (Friday, November 4, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H7383-H7385]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
{time} 1420
THE THREAT OF A NUCLEAR ARMED IRAN
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. ANDREWS. Madam Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity, and I
would like to thank the members of the House staff that are staying
beyond voting hours for our opportunity to speak, and I promise that I
will reward your efforts with brevity.
This is the end of another difficult week for a lot of Americans. For
too many Americans, it's another week without a paycheck. For many
Americans, this is the week their unemployment benefits will expire and
they will have no income next week. For many Americans, this is the
last weekend they'll be in their home because the foreclosure is about
to be executed upon. And sadly, for many Americans, this might be the
last time that he or she closes the doors on their business. This time
they close it for good.
Our constituents and neighbors are hurting, hurting desperately, and
I think there has been far too little attention paid to those problems
here in this institution. I hope that when we return after what is,
parenthetically, our 12th recess of the year, we will get to work on
the jobs problem for our country and try to put our people back to
work.
As vital as that jobs crisis is, we can never put our country in a
situation where we are not paying attention to threats to our security
here at home and around the world. And I do want to spend a few moments
this afternoon talking about what I think is a very significant threat,
and that is the threat of Iran developing a nuclear weapon.
It is to the credit of the chairwoman of the international relations
committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, and the
senior Democrat ranking member, Mr. Berman, that yesterday Republicans
and Democrats on that committee came together to pass what I consider
to be very powerful legislation that would work against the propagation
of nuclear weapons by Iran. I hope that legislation is something that
will be brought to the floor promptly and supported by Members from
both sides. I think it is important to understand what more we could do
and why it's so important to do it.
This is another productive day throughout our country. People are
going to work in our cities and in our small towns and our suburbs.
They are going to classes at universities and schools. They are
visiting their loved ones in hospitals. It is, thank God, a normal day
in America where we can do the things that we want to do. But, you
know, a day 10 years ago in September of 2001 started like a normal
day, too. September 11, 2001, was a beautiful, blue sky, crystalline
day, and it ended as one of the worst days in the history of our
country. The pain of that day is felt by people around this country not
just in the New York metropolitan region, not just in Washington, D.C.,
not just in Pennsylvania, but around the country and around the world.
I fear and dread that a similar day could come from a scenario almost
too terrible to imagine. Imagine a group of terrorists who are able to
assemble a substantial amount of money but not an impossible amount of
money--let's say about $2 million--and they're able to commandeer the
services of scientists who are evil enough or hungry enough that they
would lend their skills to the destructive task of making a small
nuclear device, what we call a small improvised explosive device, a
nuclear IED. And they don't need a missile to deliver this nuclear IED;
they need a U-Haul truck. So they assemble the IED and they load it on
the back of a U-Haul truck, and they drive it to a place where there's
a lot of innocent Americans: The National Mall right outside of this
building, a sports arena for an NFL football game, Times Square, or a
church or a synagogue or a mosque where people are about to
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worship. And they detonate the IED. The consequences are huge numbers
of deaths in the immediate area of the explosion, a significant number
of people sickened and eventually dying from nuclear poisoning, the
contamination of the area of the explosion, and a devastating blow to
the psyche of the United States of America.
How could this happen? Is this possible?
Well, it's possible only if terrorists get access to what's called
fissile material from which you can make a nuclear bomb. Fissile
material can only come from three places: You can make it, and it takes
a very significant industrial complex to do so; you can steal it, and
that's a problem that we're working on trying to prevent; or you can
have a government that gives it to you because that government is
committed to a terrorist agenda.
My colleagues, understand that the risk of Iranian nuclear
proliferation includes firing a missile at U.S. troops or U.S. allies
in the Middle East. It most certainly includes that risk, but it's not
limited to that risk. I think the greatest risk of Iranian nuclear
proliferation is the risk of fissile material being handed off by the
Iranian Government to a terrorist organization that then assembles a
small nuclear IED and brings havoc and death to innocent people in the
United States of America. How do we stop that? How do we prevent that
from happening? That was the focus of the effort of the Foreign Affairs
Committee yesterday, and I think it should be the focus of our country
and civilized countries around the world.
Now, it's important to understand the history of this problem, the
context of this problem, the risk of this problem, and what I believe
is the solution to this problem. The history is this:
Of all the Nations in the world, only one has conducted a nuclear
weapons research program and systematically lied about the fact that it
has done so, and that one nation is the Republic of Iran. The source,
it's a document from the IAEA, the international agency that monitors
nuclear development, from September 24, 2005, when that organization
said that they were uncertain of Iran's motives in failing to make
important declarations over an extended period of time and in pursuing
a policy of concealment until October of 2003. This is not a political
view of an American legislator or an ideological position of a journal.
This is the official statement from the international agency that
watches nuclear weapons. That's the history. A long history of deceit
and concealment.
What's the context? How is Iran behaving in the present state of
world affairs? First of all, they are killing United States troops in
Iraq. Here's what the State Department's 2010 country terrorism report
had to say about Iran:
Despite its pledge to support the stabilization of Iraq, Iranian
authorities continue to provide lethal support, including weapons,
training, funding, and guidance to Iraqi Shia militant groups that
target U.S. and Iraqi forces.
This is a country that is actively engaged in an attempt to kill
American soldiers in Iraq as we speak today.
Secondly, their brutality extends to their own people systematically.
Let me highlight just one chilling and horrifying example reported by
Amnesty International on October 11, 2011. An actress named Marzieh
Vafamehr has become the latest individual to face a sentence of
flogging--flogging. She was sentenced on or about October 8, 2011, to a
year in prison and 90 lashes.
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This is not the Middle Ages. I'm not reading from a historic treatise
from the year 800. I'm reading from a sentence passed down by an
Iranian court less than a month ago. What was her offense? Her offense
was she appeared in a film called ``My Tehran for Sale'' in which she
appeared in one scene without the mandatory head covering which women
in Iran are required to wear and appears to drink alcohol in another.
Her husband denied that she had consumed any alcohol, but the exact
charge was levied, and this woman is in prison as we speak and once a
month is beaten because she appeared in a movie in a way that was
culturally offensive to the regime. This is the regime that is seeking
a nuclear weapon.
What else in the context, what else are they up to? Well, let's
listen to the statements of the President of Iran. Now he's not the
person that really runs the country; the so-called Revolutionary
Council does. But he's involved in its government, President
Ahmadinejad, and here is what he said:
``Thanks to people's wishes and God's will, the trend for the
existence of the Zionist regime is downwards, and this is what God has
promised and what all nations want. Just as the Soviet Union was wiped
out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped
out.'' This is the regime that is attempting to acquire a nuclear
weapon.
And, finally, we were all, I think, stunned by the reports last week
that individuals who allegedly had ties to the Iranian Government were
indicted in the American court system for allegedly plotting the
assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States on
U.S. soil. Now, Madam Speaker, I would hasten to point out, as you well
know, in our system these are allegations, not facts, and so we cannot
say that these things are true. But I can scarcely think of a time in
the history of our country where we have indicted foreign nationals or
U.S. citizens for an alleged conspiracy to murder a foreign diplomat on
our soil. Perhaps these individuals will be found not guilty. Perhaps
they will be found guilty. But the fact that there was probable cause
to make such an assertion is deeply shocking and disconcerting. This is
the regime that is attempting to achieve a nuclear weapon.
Now how close are they? Here's a report from May 24 of 2011. The
world's global nuclear inspection agency, the IAEA, frustrated by
Iran's refusal to answer questions, revealed for the first time on
Tuesday that it, meaning the U.N. agency that watches nuclear weapons,
it possesses evidence that Tehran has conducted work on a highly
sophisticated nuclear triggering technology that experts said could be
used for only one purpose: setting off a nuclear weapon. This is the
regime that says it is trying to acquire centrifuges and nuclear power
plants to create nuclear power for its people. But the quote that I
just read is from the international agency, not from U.S. intelligence,
not from our allies, not from those who oppose the Iranian regime, but
from the neutral international agency, which, frankly, has criticized
the United States on occasion, from the neutral international agency
talking about what the Iranians are up to.
Now it's classified information as to how close they are to receiving
this, and we are all under an oath not to talk about that classified
information, but the public record is replete with information that the
Iranians are aggressively pursuing such a weapon.
And here's an academic analysis that talks about how such a weapon
could be used by a terrorist group that would be the beneficiary of an
Iranian handoff of fissile material. Based upon this professor's
analysis, and this is written by the executive director for the Project
on Managing the Atom, Jeffrey Lewis from the John F. Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University, the article is called the ``Economics
of Nuclear Terrorism.'' Here is what Professor Lewis has to say: A
terrorist organization like al Qaeda could plausibly build and deliver
a nuclear weapon for less than $2 million. Two million dollars. Now, of
course, that's $2 million after you've received the fissile material or
bought it. Well, such an organization would now have a willing partner
in Tehran that would own and be able to produce such fissile material.
We have an urgent economic crisis in our country. We need to fix it.
We have a lot of other problems we need to fix. But this is happening.
And we cannot let our attention to our economic crisis take our
attention away from our duty to prevent this kind of catastrophe from
happening to innocent people in the world.
So what do we do about it? What's the solution? How do we go forward
in a way that stops the Iranians from getting this fissile material? To
the credit of this Congress, both parties, and President Obama, the
United States imposed bilateral sanctions on the Iranians about a year
and a half ago. And
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to the credit of the United Nations Security Council, the United
Nations Security Council imposed modest sanctions on the Iranians about
a year ago, and there is some evidence that these sanctions are
beginning to work.
The United States sanctions, which were led by then-ranking member
Ros-Lehtinen and now chairwoman, and by then-Chairman Berman, now
ranking member, and frankly that relied upon the work of Senator Kirk
in the Senate, focused on a gasoline embargo. It's an odd fact, but
Iran, which is a country which exports crude oil, imports about 40
percent of its gasoline because its economy is so dysfunctional that it
cannot refine its own products. Before the U.S. sanctions were imposed,
the price of a gallon of gasoline heavily subsidized in Iran was 38
cents a gallon. Today it's $1.58 a gallon.
Now what does this mean? It means that an Iranian citizen who used to
have to work 1 hour to fill their gas tank once a week now has to work
5 hours to fill their gas tank once a week. This is not a huge
sacrifice, but it's making a dent in the economy of Iran.
It is our intention, obviously, not to in any way punish or
jeopardize the well-being of the Iranian people. They are our friends,
and we want them to be our friends and allies for years to come. But
the simple, and I think compelling, logic of these sanctions is we are
compelling the Iranian leadership to choose between pursuing their
nuclear weapons ambitions but suffering economic consequences or
abandoning those nuclear weapons ambitions and having the opportunity
to restore their economy to some basic degree of health.
By the way, at a time when crude oil prices were rising, the Iranian
economy stagnated. They had a negative growth of 1 percent last year,
and they had stagnant growth the year before that. So at a time when
they should have been enjoying robust economic growth because of rising
crude oil prices, they were stagnant because of the effectiveness of
these sanctions.
Perhaps the best evidence of effectiveness was from President
Ahmadinejad himself, who this week stood before their parliament
defending a cabinet member of his who is accused of some wrongdoing and
said that one of the reasons why they had to engage in the wrongdoing
was their economy was in bad shape because ``we can't do international
banking transactions anymore.'' Well, there's some good news.
What I'm suggesting here is that the House should move rapidly to
embrace and support the legislation that the Foreign Relations
Committee marked up yesterday. And I think that legislation will enjoy
broad Republican and Democratic support, as it did yesterday. I believe
it was approved unanimously by the committee. I would then urge our
administration to work with the Congress and sign such legislation and
implement it.
Now, listen, Madam Speaker, I fully understand that sanctions alone
may not be sufficient. And I'm not here today to argue for that
proposition. What I am here today to argue for is the proposition that
the sanctions we have imposed thus far have shown some signs of
success. I think this is the time to intensify those sanctions, not to
weaken them. I think this is a time for us to intensify our unified
national resolve on this question. And despite our very profound
differences on matters of economics and social policy, which is what a
democracy ought to have, there should be no difference between us on
the question of standing in a unified fashion in favor of more intense
sanctions against Iran. The need is urgent and compelling.
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You know, Madam Speaker, if someone had stood in this Chamber in the
mid-1990s and said, If we don't focus our intelligence efforts on an
obscure group of former mujahedin rebels in Afghanistan called al
Qaeda, if we don't do that, the day may come when we will have a
domestic Pearl Harbor, when the World Trade Centers will collapse, when
thousands of people will perish, when the Pentagon, our own air space,
will be attacked by civilians in our country, I think one would have
thought that the Member was auditioning for a Tom Clancy film. It would
sound very fantastic, very unlikely, and almost like science fiction or
a spy thriller.
I wish September 11, 2001, had been fiction--I wish. That we had not
had to go to those funerals and comfort those families who suffer
today, I wish that were the fact. And there will be some who will say
that the scenario we talked about earlier, about a nuclear IED
exploding in Times Square or the National Mall or an NFL football game,
is too provocative or too sensational or too scary. I hope they're
absolutely right; I hope it's total fiction.
But I think we ought to know better. I think we ought to know better
that there is a regime which has demonstrated its deceit, which has
manifested its evil toward its own people and to our troops in the
Middle East, that has used language that is more than just purple
language, that is language that goes beyond the pale about the
annihilation of Israel and of all those who would stand with Israel,
and that now stands accused--or persons alleged to have been tied to
that regime now stand accused in our courts of participating in a
conspiracy to assassinate a foreign diplomat on our soil. These are
people we should be concerned about.
And as we look at the question of whether such an attack could
happen, I think the question is unequivocally: Yes, it can. Our
responsibility is to, with equal equivocation, say, no, it won't, no,
it won't; that we will use the resources at our disposal--our
international alliances, our economic leverage, our diplomatic skill--
to try to move the Iranians to the point where they would accept a
reasonable deal which says if you want to have nuclear power plants in
your country, that's your sovereign right; but you must buy your fuel
from outside the country and you must abandon your ability to
manufacture and synthesize fuel. That's a reasonable and fair
settlement. We should use every tool at our disposal to encourage the
Iranian Government to accept such a settlement.
And as any wise President should do, as President Obama has done, as
President Bush did before him, as President Clinton did before him, as
President Bush did before him, as Presidents Reagan and Carter did
before them, any prudent American President must reserve the right to
defend our sovereign interests with whatever tools are necessary should
the need arise. I pray that the need will never arise. And I think if
we act intelligently, forcefully, but urgently, I think that we can
avoid that day and avoid a situation like I described earlier.
So, Madam Speaker, thank you for this time this afternoon. I'd like
to again thank the staff for its indulgence. I commend the chairwoman
of our committee and the ranking member. And I look forward to
supporting their legislation, broadening our unified, bipartisan
national effort to stand strong against the tyranny and evil of this
regime and for the welfare of innocent people throughout the world and
throughout our country.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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