[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 102 (Wednesday, June 24, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4585-S4587]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NUCLEAR AGREEMENT WITH IRAN
Mr. COATS. Mr. President, the nuclear negotiations with Iran are now
approaching a self-imposed deadline of June 30, just a few days from
now. The negotiators chose that deadline when they concluded the
interim accord 6 months ago and have reportedly been determined to
stick to it to focus their efforts.
At the same time, it may be the case that a brief extension deadline
rather than a rush to a conclusion that would bring us to a bad deal is
something we ought to consider. Senator Corker has told Secretary Kerry
exactly that, cautioning him that there is no need so desperate that
requires either accepting a bad deal or yielding to unacceptable
Iranian demands. I don't necessarily oppose a short-term extension to
reach a better conclusion or a better deal, but I have deep concerns
about whether that will be the case, even if we extend for a small
amount of time.
I fear the Obama administration is not hearing the message that a
potential bad deal could be in the making, and it raises great concern.
I fear that yielding to one Iranian demand after another in order to
secure a deal is exactly what the Obama administration has been doing
in its negotiations. I fear that we will return from our Independence
Day celebrations to take up a pending Iran nuclear deal that neither
permanently foils Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions nor makes us or the
world more secure. I fear this administration, so seemingly desperately
eager for a legacy, will choose to define any Iranian deal at all as a
great success for diplomacy, no matter how much it concedes to Iranian
positions.
In May, I and many of my colleagues worked hard to impose a
requirement for the administration to present any Iran deal to
Congress. Despite strong opposition from the Obama administration, 99
of the 100 Senators were convinced that Congress must have the ability
to evaluate in detail every aspect of a negotiated settlement and how
it is to be imposed, how it is to be monitored, and verified. That is
our core task once a deal is presented to us. It is an immensely
important duty of historic dimensions.
I hope and pray that each of us will evaluate the proposed deal on
its merits alone and what it would mean for our Nation's security, both
now and in the future when the terms have expired. Unfortunately, to
take up that duty and perform that task, we will have to immerse
ourselves in some of the arcane technical details that lie near the
heart of such negotiations. I say ``near'' the heart rather than ``at''
the heart because the very central issue for me--and hopefully for my
colleagues--is the nature of the Iranian regime, their proven,
demonstrated ill will revealed by decades of murderous aggression and
lying deceit. That is the proven record of our negotiating partner, and
all their claimed commitments will have to be evaluated in that light.
However, evaluating the technical details will present its own
challenges and we need to prepare ourselves for those challenges. We
need to take stock now of some of those details as they appear at the
moment any deal is finalized. To do that, we will have to look through
a fog of claims and counterclaims to see the outlines of something that
is still evolving, even as it remains in the shadows. But with just
those partial images, I have some deep concerns.
First, it now appears from public comments that our negotiators--and
especially Secretary Kerry himself--are no longer insisting that Iran
come clean on its past nuclear weapons development activities. This has
long been a central demand by our side, as often confirmed by our
negotiators themselves. To cave on this demand would be a fatal flaw
and should all by itself lead to rejection of the deal.
Let me state that again. To cave on this demand that Iran come clean
on its past nuclear weapons development activities all by itself should
lead to rejection of the deal, if we do not achieve that goal.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, has been pressing for
information from Iran about the past nuclear weapons programs for
years. Recently, the IAEA Director General explained the importance of
the issue this way:
What we don't know [is] whether they have undeclared
activities or something else. We don't know what they did in
the past. So, we know a part of their activities, but we
cannot tell we know all of their activities. And that is why
we cannot say that all the activities in Iran is in peaceful
purposes . . . the Agency is not in a position to provide
credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear
material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude
that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.
The Obama administration has long agreed with the IAEA that Iran
needs to come clean on its past activities to create a baseline for
understanding future activities under any agreement--an absolutely
essential standard that has to be met.
The U.S. head negotiator, Wendy Sherman--who, incidentally,
negotiated the utterly failed deal with North Korea as well--told a
Senate committee in 2013 that ``Iran must agree to address past and
present practices, which is the IAEA terminology for possible military
dimensions . . . we intend to support the IAEA in its efforts to deal
with possible military dimensions.'' Later, she told the SFRC that ``in
the Joint Plan of Action we have required that Iran come clean.''
These are the statements of our negotiators. These are the
commitments they made to the Senate and to the American people that
these were the standards that could not be breached and that if it was
not a part of the arrangement, then we would not accept this deal.
So we are quoting here from the record of what policy and what
conditions the United States has laid out before the Iranians that, if
not achieved, are a nonstarter of a deal.
Secretary Kerry has repeatedly said that the possible military
dimensions of the Iranian nuclear program ``will have to be addressed''
and ``that Iranians will have to do it.''
``It will be done,'' he said.
However, I was shocked to read last week that Secretary Kerry told
this to the Department of State press corps:
We are not fixated on Iran specifically accounting for what
they did at one point in time or another. We know what they
did. We have no doubt. We have absolute knowledge with
respect to the certain military activities they were engaged
in. What we are concerned about is going forward.
First of all, this is completely misleading. It is a complete 180-
degree turn from what had been committed to earlier. As a member of the
Senate Intelligence Committee, I can state emphatically that we do not
have absolute knowledge of anything. That is not how intelligence
works.
[[Page S4586]]
Secretary Kerry's statement suggests that he may be misusing one of
our most useful tools of statecraft--perhaps a more concerning issue
than the statement itself.
If we did have absolute knowledge of what the Iranians had done and
have done to this date, we would not have spent the past years joining
with the IAEA and the responsible international community to demand
that Iran come clean. For the life of me, I cannot understand what the
Secretary is thinking about when making such a claim. It is in total
contradiction of a key facet--maybe the key facet of this deal.
Now, suddenly we are backing away, saying ``We know everything'' when
we have for years been pursuing with the IAEA to get the knowledge of
what we do know and the IAEA basically saying to us: No, we don't know
everything. There is a lot we do not know.
In any case, I regard this new position as a blatant reversal of a
key part of our negotiating objectives and a capitulation to the
Iranians--a capitulation that reveals, perhaps, how desperate the
administration is to secure a deal--any deal.
The next point of concern is the type and pace of sanctions relief we
seem to be dangling as an incentive for the Iranians to accept any
deal. This issue is very complex technically, legally, and
legislatively. One key point is that throughout these negotiations, the
administration has consistently argued that any deal would lead only to
sanctions relief regarding nuclear issues. But the fact sheet that the
White House put out following the interim deal framework stated that
U.S. sanctions on Iran for terrorism, human rights abuses, and
ballistic missiles will remain in place under the deal.
Let me say that again. The administration put out this fact sheet
following the interim deal stating that U.S. sanctions on Iran for
terrorism, human rights abuses, and ballistic missiles will remain in
place under the deal.
Now it seems this limitation was not good enough for the Iranians,
and we have caved again.
Yesterday, the so-called Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, included
this matter in his expanded list of redlines. He said that all
economic, financial, and banking sanctions implemented either by the
United Nations Security Council, the United States Congress, or the
administration must be lifted immediately when the deal is signed.
According to media reports, which have not been refuted by the
administration since they began appearing last month, the Supreme
Leader has won again.
The emerging deal may roll back sanctions that had been imposed for
these other nonnuclear reasons. According to these reports, based on
leaks from the negotiating teams, 23 out of the 24 currently sanctioned
Iranian banks will be delisted as sanctions targets, including the
Central Bank of Iran. This is the Revolutionary Guard Corps-dominated
institution that was sanctioned because of its role in money
laundering, financing terrorism, ballistic weapons research, and
campaign claims of bolstering the Assad regime in Syria. Removing
sanctions applied to these banks will give Iran hundreds of billions of
dollars that could be used for their terrorism activities in regional
proxy wars.
These reports, if true, constitute yet another reversal of clearly
stated policy and yet another capitulation to the Iranians.
No. 3, it appears that negotiators may be aiming at an arrangement to
set aside the dispute about open, free access to Iranian facilities. We
have long maintained that any agreement would have to give the IAEA
such access--stated over and over to us through our briefings, by the
Secretary, and by others negotiating this. What this means is open,
free access anytime, anywhere. It appears this is not now the case. We
have long maintained that the IAEA have access anytime, anyplace, as
their spokesmen have often emphasized. President Obama himself
reassured the region's nervous Arab leaders on this very point in an
effort to gain their acceptance of the deal.
In the meantime, once again Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader,
has stated emphatically that no such access would be granted, and other
Iranian authorities repeated this redline that the Iranians have drawn
in the deal and that we are capitulating to, one after another. Their
Parliament even recently passed a law to this effect. It looked like an
unbridgeable gap. Khamenei repeated this firm position again just
yesterday.
Some argue that Khamenei's declarations are part of the negotiating
strategy. Well, if so, it seems to have worked. Anyplace access for
intrusive inspection has been taken out. We have dropped ``anytime,
anyplace.''
The buzzword phrase that now is being giving to us is ``managed
access.'' When I first heard that, I said, what in the world does that
mean, ``managed access''? With this concept, it appears there would now
be a mechanism that would evaluate requests for access to determine if
there is a genuine need. Instead of anytime, anyplace, anywhere, for
any reason, in order to verify that the Iranians are not cheating, that
has turned into now a request for a search or for access at their time
and their decision as to what the place will be or what the place will
not be. This makes a mockery of the state of the original required
demand for access at anytime, anyplace. ``Access where needed, when
needed'' seems to be the new mantra--where needed, when needed, giving
them plenty of time to make a decision as to yea or nay or to remove
from those sites damning evidence of their pursuit of nuclear
capabilities.
Because this issue of access is crucial to the issue of credibility,
verification, and compliance, it arguably is the most important
requirement of all for an acceptable deal. Those advocating for the
emerging deal are actually boasting that this artful dodging is a
negotiating victory.
Is there anything more we need to say about the weak and compromising
negotiating strategy of those who are currently at the table
representing the United States? I have just named and spelled out three
major concerns regarding these negotiations, but there are many other
aspects of the apparently emerging deal that separately and together
show a pattern--a very disturbing pattern of constant retreat and
capitulation by this administration in the negotiations with the
Iranians. I won't go into the details of each of these, but let me just
run off several other issues of major concern.
One, the clearly inadequate timeframe for any agreement, the sunset
clause--it is no longer a part of the negotiations; two, outrageously
generous details of sanctions relief, both scale and timing; the almost
laughable, specious claims of sanctions snapback provisions--whatever
that means--once the sanctions regime has been dismantled; the number
of and types of enrichment equipment to be retained by the Iranians;
the types of enrichment activities that will be permitted in the
thousands of modern centrifuges in the most fortified, bunkered
facilities; fatal limitations on our ability to monitor and verify
compliance; and the Joint Plan of Action provisions that Iran has
already blatantly violated without any White House comment.
My colleagues, once a deal is announced, it will be critical that we
exercise the wisdom and courage to evaluate it honestly. My doubts
about our ability to do so are aggravated by the public relations
campaign we can foresee. Indeed, we have seen it before when the
Clinton administration told us the nuclear deal with North Korea was
``good for America.'' I was a Member of the Senate at that time. I
raised a number of issues and concerns about whether this deal with
North Korea was good for America. I did not vote to support that
effort. Nevertheless, the treaty was agreed to.
The framework agreement with North Korea, President Clinton said in
1994, ``is a good deal for the United States. North Korea will freeze
and dismantle its nuclear programs.'' North Korea will freeze and
dismantle its nuclear programs. ``South Korea and our other allies will
be better protected. The entire world will be safer as we slow the
spread of nuclear weapons. . . . The United States and international
inspectors will carefully monitor North Korea to make sure it keeps its
commitments. Only as it does so will North Korea fully join the
community of nations.''
That is what was promised in 1994. That is what was stated to
Senators on
[[Page S4587]]
this floor in 1994--that we can count on the fact that we are going to
know if the North Koreans cheat and we are not going to allow them to
do that. How significantly this resonates now, all these years later,
as we are assured by the administration and by Secretary Kerry: Don't
worry. Everything is covered. Inspections will take place. They won't
be able to cheat. We will know it if they do. The sanctions will come
back on. We will snap back those sanctions, et cetera, et cetera.
Some Members took a bite of that apple and regret that. I did not. I
am sure not going to take another bite of that apple, and no one else
should view this current negotiation with Iran without putting it in
the context of what was done before. We have been here before. We need
to learn the lessons from that. We now know that North Korea possesses
dozens of nuclear weapons and the ballistic missile capacity to deliver
those weapons. We now know they cheated blatantly and we did not know
it. The so-called guarantee of verification was not accomplished and
not achieved.
So before making a final decision on the Iran so-called deal, we need
to learn the lessons from the Clinton administration and the agreement
with North Korea. The similarities between the secret negotiations then
and the secret ones now are remarkable.
In 1994, a key sticking point was complete access to nuclear sites,
and then, too, we caved in order to get the deal.
In 1994, the White House and major media outlets trumpeted a deal
that would make the world safer--a victory for diplomacy over force and
hostility. Those who did not see this as something that was going to be
enforced were called warmongers.
Here is the choice, war or peace. Some choice. North Korea promised
to forgo their nuclear weapons ambitions, and although I could not vote
to support President Clinton's request, enough of the Senate did to
approve the agreement with North Korea.
Now we know they have between 20 to 40 nuclear weapons, possibly
miniaturized, ICBMs--intercontinental ballistic missiles--to put them
on and recently tested submarine launch missiles.
Another lesson is the time gap between the heralded diplomatic
breakthrough and the revelation that we had been taken to the cleaners.
It took years to learn what we had really done in North Korea and not
done in North Korea.
The failure of a bad deal with Iran will not be evident to most of us
for years perhaps--perhaps even 10, 11 or 12 years, even when President
Obama concedes that Iran's nuclear breakout time will be zero.
In fact, such a delay--in the unlikely event Iran actually complies
with a deal--is the stated objective of the P5+1 negotiators--to impose
a delay of a decade or so on Iran's nuclear weapons program. That is
what they will define as success.
But we must remember this: Today's brutal, unhinged, nuclear-armed
North Korea is actually a product of misguided and naive American
diplomacy, sold to the Senate as something other than what it was. We
now know the agreement with North Korea was not a diplomatic victory
but a diplomatic and policy failure, an absolute failure. My deep
concern is that this time many will, once again, see the emerging deal
as a great victory for diplomacy, no matter what it contains.
The utterly false claim that it presents a choice between peaceful
resolution of a dispute and war, as a consequence of not arranging and
agreeing to a deal, will be a central part of the discourse and
salesmanship that will confront us as Senators. Those opposed will
potentially be labeled as war mongers.
It is good of us to remember something that was said by Winston
Churchill leading up to World War II: Peace at any price does not lead
to peace. It only lengthens the path for war with far greater
consequences in terms of cost or blood.
So, for us, we are going to have to stand up to those who posit the
false choice between peace and between war. We have a more difficult
obligation of historic consequences, looking to the following decade.
Such a duty must not be guided by party. It must not be guided by
politics. It must not be guided by deference either to the White House,
our own leadership or even our constituents.
We must look at each and every detail of any agreement presented to
us to reach a judgment on whether this so-called deal with Iran will
prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability. Then, and only
then, we must decide on that basis whether to approve or reject the
deal that will be presented to us by the President and his Secretary of
State. To do anything less than fulfilling this obligation and this
duty that each one of us has, will be a failure of our duty as a U.S.
Senator, with historic consequences if we get it wrong.
My hope, prayer, wish, desire, and admonition is that each one of us
sees this as something with historic consequences that will affect not
only the future of our Nation and our people but will affect the future
of the world. Therefore, we must give full attention and every ounce of
our best wisdom and judgment in determining, not for political or party
or any other reason--other than finding out and determining whether
this deal is acceptable or not acceptable and make our yes be yes and
our no be no and well reasoned, well judged, and well decided.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
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