[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 76 (Wednesday, May 8, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2720-S2721]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                  Iraq

  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, over the Easter recess, Senator Romney and 
I had the privilege to visit our troops and our diplomats in Iraq. They 
are serving us well, and they are putting their lives on the line as we 
partner with the Iraqis to make sure that ISIS does not reconstitute 
itself in Iraq or in Syria. We have taken their territory away from 
them, but there are still over 20,000 or so ISIS fighters and loyalists 
in and around the region.
  Once again, our trip proved to both of us that our soldiers and our 
diplomats are the best in the world. We are so lucky to have them be so 
willing to stand on guard for us all over the world. It may be the most 
important assignment today in Iraq as we continue to battle the 
scattered remnants of ISIS.
  I don't want a President who takes the unquestioning advice of his 
military leaders. I want a President who is willing to push back. But 
nobody knows how to defeat ISIS better than the U.S. military. They 
effectively have done it twice. They beat al-Qaida in Iraq, and then 
they came back again with many partners to take territory away from 
ISIS. Nobody takes more seriously the threat of ISIS's reemergence or 
the threat of an expansionist Iran than the U.S. military. But I am 
here today to talk about our President's refusal, over and over again, 
to listen to the advice that he is being given by his generals and by 
his advisers at the Department of Defense. Instead, he is listening to 
the Iraq hawks inside the White House who think about this problem 
through the air-conditioned safety of their West Wing offices with 
little regard to how things actually work in the real world on the 
ground of the Middle East.
  I want to talk about our two main objectives today in Iraq and in 
Iran, and I want to frame this in the context of today's disastrous 
news that the Iranians are restarting elements of their nuclear weapons 
program.
  First, let's talk about a bipartisan commitment that we share, and 
that is the commitment to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. In 
and of itself, it would be a world disaster. It would present an 
immediate existential threat to our partners in Israel, and it would 
result in an arms race throughout the region that would be exacerbated 
by the fact that in the last 2 years, the Trump administration has made 
the decision to engage in a new nuclear partnership with the Saudis, 
which puts the Saudis on a quicker path to obtaining a nuclear weapon 
in case that arms race sets off.
  What the Trump administration has done is to goad Iran into 
restarting their nuclear weapons program. They announced last night 
that they are pulling out of their side of the Iran nuclear agreement 
and that they are going to start to, once again, take steps that could 
lead them to a quick breakout to a nuclear weapon.
  Those who opposed the agreement that President Obama signed did so, 
in part, because they said that it could allow Iran to restart its 
nuclear weapons program in 10 to 13 years and that 10 to 13 years 
wasn't enough security to sign on to that agreement. Well, President 
Trump has now managed to press the Iranians into restarting their 
nuclear weapons program in 4 years. We didn't get 10 years; we didn't 
get 13 years; we got 4 years, and Iran is back on a potential path to a 
nuclear weapon.
  The President will say that he is imposing crippling new sanctions on 
Iran, such that they will come back to the negotiating table. But let's 
be honest.

[[Page S2721]]

There is not a plausible path for that to happen in the next year and a 
half of the President's term. It took President Obama two terms to 
engage in multilateral sanctions to get the Iranians to the negotiating 
table. There are no credible analysts of Iranian behavior or of 
politics in the Middle East that will tell you that the Iranians are 
going to come back to the negotiating table in the next 12 months, in 
part, because the balance of powers has totally flipped.
  Under the Obama administration, it was the United States, Europe, 
China, and Russia on one side and the Iranians on the other side. 
President Trump has managed to flip that alignment, such that it is now 
the Iranians, the Europeans, the Chinese, and the Russians on one side 
and the United States isolated on the other. If you don't believe me, 
just take a look at the statements that many of those parties sent out 
in response to Iran's decision last night, effectively aligning 
themselves with the Iranians' decision to restart their nuclear program 
instead of aligning themselves, as they had for years, with the U.S. 
position of strict nonproliferation.
  It is a disaster for the United States that Iran has restarted its 
nuclear weapons program. It is a massive failure of President Trump's 
strategy, but it is only one element of a meandering Iranian strategy 
that is accruing to the national security detriment of the United 
States.
  Let's talk about our second primary objective in this region. I 
referenced it at the outset. It is to prevent the reemergence and 
reconstitution of ISIS inside Iraq and Syria. We have bad news to 
report there as well.
  The Trump administration took another step that had been counseled 
against by his generals and by his military leaders, and that is the 
designation of the IRGC--an element of the Iranian military--as a 
terrorist group. Now, nobody could come to this floor and defend the 
actions of Iran or the IRGC. They have absolutely supported terrorism 
in the region for years. They supported Shia militias inside Iraq that 
were shooting at and killing American troops. Yet, notwithstanding that 
activity, our military leaders and our diplomats inside Iraq cautioned 
the administration against making this designation because weighing the 
costs of it against the benefits to our military leaders was a clear 
case.
  The costs are this: By telling these militias inside Iran that they 
have to make a choice today between the United States and this newly 
designated terrorist group, the Iranian militias make the choice 
easily. They align themselves with Iran, their neighbor, not the United 
States. The effect of our decision is to push more of these militia 
groups closer to the Iranians.
  Second, we no longer can talk diplomatically to the groups that have 
associations with the IRGC, and that is a lot of these militia groups. 
That means that the United States effectively takes itself out of the 
game diplomatically. We no longer have the ability to engage in 
political reconciliation in the country like we used to.
  All of this presses the case of ISIS, as they are able to make the 
case that Baghdad is more and more leaning toward Shia interests and 
Iranian interests. As the United States isn't there in order to press 
the reconciliation case, ISIS has an opportunity to reemerge. All of 
this also accrues to the benefit of those interested in Iraq who want 
the U.S. military out.
  Just months ago there was an effort to push a bill through Parliament 
to expel the United States and our continued hard line on Iran. As much 
as it may make sense to the air-conditioned offices of the White House 
to allow those interests in Iraq to, potentially, successfully litigate 
the case to push the U.S. military out of that country, it would, once 
again, open the gates to ISIS.
  As far as I can tell, the administration's policy is to set in motion 
a series of escalatory actions with respect to Iran that has no end 
game with no logical conclusion. There isn't a diplomatic process at 
the end of this rainbow. The President has a year and a half left in 
his term. There isn't enough time, and there is no willingness in Iran 
and no partners on our side, as I have mentioned.
  So what is the other alternative--military action? An invasion of 
Iran would be an unmitigated national security disaster. It would make 
the mistake of invading Iraq look positively benign, in retrospect. 
There is no appetite in America for such an endeavor, and there is no 
way the votes exist in Congress to authorize such an action.
  The risk, of course, is that we fall into war by accident or through 
a series of events that appear as an accident. When you commit yourself 
to such an unplanned and unscripted series of military and diplomatic 
escalations, as the Trump administration has, and you have no working 
channel of communication to settle misunderstandings, then accidents 
can easily happen. Shots can be fired; lives can be lost, and then our 
options suddenly narrow. That is the real risk of the path we are on 
today. What scares the heck out of me is that it is a path that is 
seemingly being made up day by day, and it is a path that is opposed by 
our military and that is laid out without any meaningful input from our 
diplomats who are on the ground in the region. That is a potential 
recipe for disaster.
  It shouldn't matter whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, a 
liberal or a conservative because messing around in the Middle East, in 
countries like Iran and Iraq, with no strategy and no clear set of 
goals should send chills down every Senator's spine.
  I yield the floor.