[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 80 (Tuesday, May 14, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Page S2805]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                  Iran

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, 1 year ago, President Trump recklessly 
withdrew from the historic nuclear agreement reached between the United 
States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, China, and Iran to 
end Iran's nuclear weapons program.
  President Trump decided to withdraw from that agreement. It is not 
clear to me why President Trump further undermined our country's 
international reputation by backing out of this agreement reached by 
key global powers.
  To think that we had a consensus, including Russia and China and our 
traditional allies of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, and the 
President decided to walk away from it is beyond me.
  As with so many issues, he seems motivated to reverse anything ever 
done by President Barack Obama, regardless of the facts or by his naive 
belief that he can always strike a better deal.
  Sadly, I have yet to see any evidence of that dealmaking acumen. In 
fact, I have only seen alienated allies, giveaways to dictators, and a 
loss of American standing and influence in the world.
  It is important to step back and recall where we were when President 
Obama took office. Our intelligence community assessed that until 2003, 
Iran was working toward a nuclear bomb. Among the many calamities of 
the disastrous war in Iraq was that it further empowered Iran. The 
country's hard-liners moved forward at great speed, building suspicious 
nuclear infrastructure. These efforts produced large and unsettling 
quantities of highly enriched uranium that could have been used for a 
nuclear weapon.
  Such a weapon in the hands of the Iranian regime would have been an 
unacceptable risk to the region, to Israel, and to the world.
  This is the mess that President Obama inherited when he came to 
office. He pledged that Iran would not be able to obtain a nuclear bomb 
on his watch, and he kept his word. You see, just as President Kennedy 
negotiated with the Soviets when they were threatening possible nuclear 
war with missiles in Cuba, just as President Nixon began to establish 
ties with China while it was supplying weapons to the North Koreans, 
who were fighting Americans, and just as President Reagan negotiated 
with the Soviet Union, even though it was occupying Eastern Europe and 
fomenting violent revolution, there are times when such agreements 
serve our national interest and make the world a safer place.
  Similarly, President Obama negotiated a comprehensive deal that 
prevented Iran from being able to build a nuclear bomb and held it to 
stringent, invasive inspections to ensure that Iran kept its pledge.
  Notably, this historic agreement was accomplished without drawing the 
United States into war in the Middle East. Let me be clear. The nuclear 
agreement was never about all the other genuinely troubling Iranian 
behavior in the world, but, instead, it was designed to ensure that 
Iran didn't pursue activities with a nuclear weapon. That is what it 
did.
  The International Atomic Energy Agency continues to verify that on 
the ground in Iran the agreement still holds. For the last 4 years, 
this Agency has performed an average of four surprise inspections every 
month--8,000 inspection hours--and they have found no evidence of 
noncompliance on the Iranian side.
  Now, today, President Trump is pursuing an incomprehensible policy of 
regime change, trying to flatter and meet with Iranian President Ruhani 
to negotiate a supposedly better deal and threatening Iran militarily 
and tightening sanctions. The end result of this dangerous incoherence 
is that our allies are united against us, sadly to say, and Iran may 
restart nuclear activities which had been frozen for the last 4 years 
because of the agreement that President Trump walked away from.
  So the only thing our President's policies have done is to make a 
potential restart of Iran's nuclear program a reality. I fear that 
President Trump, with the goading of many around him, is trying to 
foment a pretext for another war in the Middle East--the last thing 
America or the world needs.
  So let me be clear on something that I have said regardless of who is 
in the White House, a Republican President or a Democratic President. 
Article I, section 8 of our Constitution is clear that Congress has the 
authority--the only authority--to declare war. This President--any 
President--must first have the approval of the people's representatives 
in Congress before asking our sons and daughters to enter into battle.
  It is not too late for an off-ramp.
  I am concerned that this word isn't even close to the way I actually 
feel with the suggestion that Acting Defense Secretary Shanahan was 
called on to create a plan using 130,000 American military to be poised 
in some effort to intimidate Iran. One hundred thirty thousand--that is 
the number of troops we sent into Iraq.
  I was happy to be one of the 23 members of the Senate who voted 
against that terrible decision, but we didn't prevail. We went into 
Iraq and thousands of Americans died. It can happen on any President's 
watch. This President is setting the stage for it to happen in Iran.
  Sadly, the American people have not been dealt into the conversation. 
They have one thing to turn to, though, our Constitution, which says 
that, ultimately, the American people will make the decision when it 
comes to war through their elected representatives.
  This administration should return to the only reasonable, smart, and 
effective option on the table for countering Iran: Rejoin the nuclear 
agreement immediately, repair our strained relationship with our own 
allies, and use that unity to push back on Iran's destabilizing actions 
across the region which exist outside the nuclear realm. Anything else 
is reckless.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Blackburn). The Senator from Texas.