[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
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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.
____________________