[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 90 (Wednesday, May 24, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3122-S3124]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                  Iran

  Mr. President, one of the countries on this list of the 195 
subscribing to and signing on to the Paris Agreement was the country of 
Iran. I want to talk a little bit about Iran in the time that remains.
  I came home from church this past Sunday. My wife and I were in the 
kitchen--we were fixing breakfast--when I turned on the television and 
watched, I think it was, CNN. They were broadcasting live from Saudi 
Arabia our President's talking to a large group of national leaders 
representing Muslim countries from around the world, hosted by Saudi 
Arabia. The President was giving his speech. He was using a 
teleprompter, but a lot of Presidents use teleprompters. He was reading 
a speech off of the teleprompter. As I was listening, I actually 
thought that this was a pretty good speech. Closer to the end of the 
speech--I do not know if he went off camera or went off the 
teleprompter and just did an inaudible or if this was part of the 
speech--he started talking about Iran and why they are a nemesis to a 
lot of the world and are not to be trusted--somebody we should not be 
doing business with or going into any kind of agreements with, even an 
agreement that causes them not to be able to build a nuclear weapon.
  In any event, I thought to myself that there is a real irony here 
because, as he was going on and berating Iran, they were still counting 
the votes in Iran from the election that had occurred the day before, 
which is unlike many of the countries that were represented and that 
President Trump was addressing in that they do not have elections in 
those countries. Women do not get to hold office or run for office in 
many of those countries.
  Let me just be the first to say that, clearly, Iran is not a 
Jeffersonian democracy, and, as some would suggest of late, maybe our 
credentials are somewhat tarnished on that too. I think of the over 
1,600 people who registered to run for President in Iran. There were 
1,600 people in Iran who wanted to run for President this year, and 
Iran's Guardian Council only allowed 6, ultimately, to run.
  Iran has never allowed a woman to run for President. Women do hold 
elected positions. They serve in the parliament and in municipal 
positions, but none of them has ever run for President. We have had one 
or two or maybe three.
  Iran does not enjoy a free press. International election observers 
are strictly forbidden, and there are widespread allegations that 
Iran's 2009 Presidential elections, in which Ahmadinejad was supposedly 
reelected--I doubt that he was, but there are a lot of people who think 
those elections were rigged.
  In Iran, most of the final decisions rest with the Supreme Leader, at 
least decisions of consequence, and the Supreme Leader, as we know, is 
not popularly elected by the people of that country.
  Here is what happened in the elections in Iran over the weekend. A 
lot of people turned out to vote, and they were willing to support a 
candidate who openly advocates for engagement with the West, including 
with us. The Supreme Leader of Iran, frankly, did not want President 
Rouhani to be reelected, but he was, with nearly 60 percent of the 
vote. In fact, the Supreme Leader, I think, and others urged others to 
get out of the race so that there would be just a one-on-one against a

[[Page S3123]]

hard-line candidate, who was favored by the Supreme Leader, and 
President Rouhani, who turned out to be favored in the election by 
almost 60 percent of the voters.
  Of the people who voted, I do not know how this breaks out by age, 
but the country of Iran is a young country. They had their revolution 
back in the late 1970s. You may recall they captured our Embassy and 
held our folks hostage during the end of the Carter administration. 
They created a lot of havoc--not a lot of bloodshed but a lot of 
havoc--and a lot of bad will from that point in time until almost to 
this day.
  Most of the people who live in Iran today are under the age of 30. A 
clear majority of them were not alive in 1970 to 1979. They never knew 
the fellow who led that revolution in Iran in the late 1970s. Most of 
the people in that country today were born after 1979.
  I have talked to any number of Americans, including those who have 
held senior positions in previous administrations who have gone to Iran 
in recent years, and they all tell me the same story. They could not 
believe how welcomed they were by people everywhere--young people and 
not so young people, but especially by young people. There was a 
fascination on the part of especially the young people with our 
country, and there actually appears to be a fair amount of respect and 
admiration for our country. They would like to have a better 
relationship with our country.
  They turned out and voted for a President. They also voted in 
municipal elections over the weekend. In the municipal elections, they 
voted out some sitting mayors of cities like Tehran, which is the 
capital city. The mayor there was a hard-liner, and, apparently, he has 
been knocked out of office or will be shortly. There are many other 
municipal leaders, and a moderate reformist will be succeeding one of 
the hard-liners.
  I do not mean to suggest that all in Iran love us. They do not. The 
Revolutionary Guard and some of their leadership do not care for us at 
all. They, frankly, like terrorism and embrace terrorism and would like 
to continue to foment upheaval and terror in some parts around the 
country. They are not the future of their country. The future of their 
country voted last weekend. We have all heard about voting for change. 
Well, they voted for change, and my hope is that they will get what 
they voted for.
  I think, for us, we have to be smart enough to say that no democracy 
is perfect--not ours, not theirs--and give them at least a passing 
grade for effort and see, as we go forward, how we can find ways to 
work together.
  I served in the Vietnam war--three tours in Southeast Asia. I came 
back at the end of the war and moved from California to Delaware. I got 
an MBA and became the treasurer, Congressman, Governor, and Senator of 
Delaware. When I was a Congressman, I led a six-member congressional 
delegation, including one former U.S. POW, Air Force Capt. Pete 
Peterson, who spent 6 years in the Hanoi Hilton. We went back to 
Vietnam a month after I stepped down as a captain in the U.S. Navy. We 
went back to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos to find out what happened to 
the thousands of MIAs whose bodies were never recovered. We do not know 
how they died or where they died or when they died, but we went back 
and tried to get to the truth. We did so at the behest and 
encouragement of the George Herbert Walker Bush administration.

  We took with us a roadmap to normalize relations between the United 
States and Vietnam. Lo and behold, we ended up getting to meet their 
brand new leader, Do Muoi. He was a brand new leader who had only been 
in office for a week. We presented our roadmap to normalize relations. 
The six of us--Democrat and Republican Members of the House--had a very 
emotional meeting with him--a very emotional meeting--and said that 
these are the things you have to do. If you want to normalize relations 
with us, give us access to crash sites, the ability to excavate crash 
sites, the ability to talk to people who live in those areas and 
communities that are around those crash sites, the ability to go into 
your war museums, and the ability to go into your military archives and 
get as much information as we can. We said that we wanted our folks--
U.S. folks--to be able to go around the country, to travel around their 
country. If somebody reports seeing a round-eye, or somebody who might 
be American, we want to be able to go find him.
  A long story short, they did all of the things we asked them to do. 
Pete Peterson, a Member of our delegation, became the U.S. Ambassador 
to Vietnam. He made sure that the Vietnamese kept to the letter and 
spirit of that agreement. They did, and we normalized relations.
  When I went back to Vietnam last year with President Obama, I met 
with some of the same people I had met with in August of 1991, who are 
now leaders of their countries. Do Muoi is still alive. I wrote him a 
note and sent it to him while I was there.
  There are 55,000 American names that are on a wall down by the 
Lincoln Memorial--55,000 men and women who died in the war, with whom I 
served--and we have allowed bygones to be bygones with Vietnam. They 
are not a Jeffersonian democracy, but it turns out that we have worked 
through our difficulties. They have become a major trading partner with 
the United States--in fact, a major market. They want to buy things 
from us, too, like Boeing jets, and a lot of them for a lot of money--
billions of dollars.
  As it turns out, they and Iran have an airline that is decrepit. We 
used to joke about an airline in this country that was called 
Allegheny. We called it ``Agony.'' We had another airline in this 
country called ``Tree Top.'' In Iran, they do not have an airline to be 
proud of, as they have very old airplanes and not especially safe 
airplanes. Like Vietnam, they want to buy our airplanes--a lot of them, 
for a lot of money.
  I would hope that we could be smart enough to say that maybe we 
should sell to them. We are not going to sell them military equipment. 
We sell military equipment to Vietnam now, but we are not going to do 
that kind of thing with Iran. Maybe, if we are smart, we can sell them 
airplanes and, later on, the parts to the airplanes and, later on, 
other things as well. We should start small and go from there, as we 
have with Vietnam.
  I will close, but if I could, I want to just say that our President, 
who has called for the isolation of Iran, also has, basically, praised 
the actions of President Duterte, of the Philippines, the leader of the 
Philippines. Do you know what he has done? He has launched a campaign 
of extrajudicial murders and has killed over 8,000 people.
  He has warmly welcomed the leader of Turkey, Erdogan, who may have 
won or may not have won a tight election that gives him extraordinary 
powers as the leader of that country.
  The President welcomed to the White House Egyptian President El-Sisi, 
who came to power through military intervention and not an elected 
government. President Trump has said recently that he would be 
``honored'' to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong un, and that is 
despite the repeated threats from the Korean leader to launch nuclear 
weapons at the United States and our allies.
  Somehow all of those things that this President has done and the 
things that he has spoken out against, including having any kind of 
relationship with Iran, does not seem, to me, to be consistent. I will 
be polite and say it is inconsistent. I think we need to be smarter 
than that.
  With regard to the note that I wrote to the former leader of Vietnam 
when I was, literally, at the Hanoi Hilton--back at the prison in which 
John McCain and Pete Peterson were imprisoned--I saw a huge picture on 
the wall when I was there last year, and I wrote the note and gave it 
to a young Vietnamese man who knew Do Muoi. I wrote that same African-
American proverb: If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to 
go far, go together.
  Ultimately, we found a way with Vietnam. It took a long time. The war 
pretty much ended in 1975. It took a long time to get to more normal 
relations. We finally made it, and they are better for it, and we are 
too. Someday, the time will come to turn a page, I think, with Iran. We 
are not there yet, but we are getting a little closer.
  For now, I just want to say to those people, though, in that country, 
who

[[Page S3124]]

took the time and made the effort to vote and decided to vote for 
change and to vote for the reformist--the more moderate form of 
government--and wanted to be more westward looking than would otherwise 
be the case: Good for you. My hope in doing that is that you will join 
us in basically turning down the idea of continuing support for 
Hezbollah and for terrorism that the other part of Iran and some of the 
others in leadership are determined to sustain.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Toomey). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Under the previous order, all postcloture time has expired.
  The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the Sullivan 
nomination?
  Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  The result was announced--yeas 94, nays 6, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 135 Ex.]

                                YEAS--94

     Alexander
     Baldwin
     Barrasso
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Brown
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Capito
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Cassidy
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coons
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cortez Masto
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Feinstein
     Fischer
     Flake
     Franken
     Gardner
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hassan
     Hatch
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hirono
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kaine
     Kennedy
     King
     Klobuchar
     Lankford
     Leahy
     Lee
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCain
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Paul
     Perdue
     Peters
     Portman
     Reed
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Scott
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Stabenow
     Strange
     Sullivan
     Tester
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Wyden
     Young

                                NAYS--6

     Booker
     Duckworth
     Gillibrand
     Harris
     Sanders
     Warren
  The nomination was confirmed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the motion to 
reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table, and the 
President will be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

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