[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 82 (Thursday, May 16, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2908-S2911]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                  Iran

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, years before President Trump moved to the 
White House, even before President Obama and his family lived there, 
our Nation was at odds with an isolated country ruled by a repressive 
leader. It wasn't long before it became clear to the United Nations and 
to our country's own intelligence community that the country I am 
speaking of was enriching uranium for the purpose of obtaining a 
nuclear weapon, threatening to destabilize a region of great strategic 
importance.
  As the world was winding down from a cold war, tensions between the 
United States and this country were heating up. An administration that 
some would call naive recently attempted to deescalate tensions, taking 
an unprecedented step to hold out an olive branch to an unpredictable 
regime in hopes of reaching a momentous agreement to stop them from 
continuing to enrich uranium. Surprisingly, that President trusted and 
was willing to give unprecedented concessions, all without any reliable 
mechanism to verify whether the nuclear enrichment had indeed ended.
  My Republican colleagues would be surprised to hear me say this 
today, especially today, a week after the anniversary of the U.S. 
decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal. They are right to be 
surprised because I am not talking about Iran; I am talking about North 
Korea. I am not talking about President Barack Obama; I am talking 
about Donald Trump.
  Donald Trump was willing to sit down with a criminal dictator and 
give away unprecedented concessions in the hopes that North Korea would 
abandon its nuclear program. On the other hand, he turned his back on 
Iran, a large country with a growing moderate population--roughly 75 
million people, the majority of which, the last I checked, are under 
the age of 25--and a moderate President. Let me be really clear. There 
are some bad actors in Iran, and some of them are in powerful 
positions. But, unfortunately, the actions of this administration, 
unlike the actions of the last administration, the Obama 
administration--here is what they sought to do. They sought to diminish 
the extremists, the hardliners, and their sway over what happens in 
Iran and at the same time bolster a new generation of Iranians who are 
growing up, who are more moderate in nature and, frankly, who would 
like to have a better relationship with our country. Sadly, President 
Trump turned his back on Iran and looked forward to taking a different 
course--a different course for sure.
  Unlike North Korea, Iran committed 2 years ago to unprecedented, 
invasive inspections under a deal called JCPOA. On July 14, 2015, after 
years of careful preparation, the Obama administration began 
implementing the JCPOA with Iran and five negotiating partners--Great 
Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China--in an effort to end Iran's 
pursuit of nuclear weapons for years and, possibly, if we are lucky, 
forever. The deal was not based on trust; it was based on mistrust--
mistrust.
  There is a Ronald Reagan line that says: ``Trust, but verify.'' That 
is not the underlying principle with the Iran deal, the JCPOA. It is 
mistrust, but verify. That is the theme that underlies the JCPOA.
  Under that agreement, Iran was required to end uranium enrichment for 
nuclear purposes and would be subject to invasive inspections by the 
International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA. To the surprise of many, 
they had apparently held up their end of the bargain until now.
  We pulled out of the JCPOA a year ago. Our other negotiating partners 
stayed in, and the IAEA recently certified for the 14th time in a row--
I think in February of this year--that Iran has complied with the terms 
of the agreement, the letter and spirit of the agreement that we pulled 
out of a year ago. We are the only one who has pulled out of it to 
date. The IAEA itself says that the inspection regime laid out by this 
agreement, the JCPOA, is the world's toughest--the world's toughest.
  Here is the bottom line. Because of the JCPOA, Iran is much further 
away from developing a nuclear weapon today than it was before the deal 
was signed several years ago. However, as I said earlier, we have not 
held up our end of the bargain. One year ago, President Trump announced 
that this country would unilaterally leave the JCPOA, even though the 
IAEA certified for the 14th time in a row, this year, that Iran has 
complied with the terms of the agreement. But we pulled out, leaving 
our allies, who committed to the deal in good faith, in the lurch.
  This decision we made, I think regrettably a year ago, had 
consequences. Instead of celebrating continued stability provided by 
the Iran nuclear deal last week, Iran's President, President Rouhani, 
announced that Iran will begin to end its compliance with some portions 
of the JCPOA, including by stockpiling enriched uranium and heavy 
water.
  As I said at that time, President Trump's decision increased the odds 
of armed conflict with Iran while doing nothing to constrain their 
other malicious activities in the region. Again, make no mistake. Not 
everybody in Iran wants to be our friend. Mostly young people want to 
be our friends, and a lot of folks who have been elected to office over 
there would like to have a friendly, better relationship with this 
country. But there are some who do not, and I fully acknowledge that.
  Today, thanks to President Trump's appointment of John Bolton to be 
our National Security Advisor--the President's National Security 
Advisor--we are seeing that prediction come truer than I could have 
imagined.
  Last month, the Trump administration designated the Iranian 
Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist organization, further 
antagonizing Iran. Members of the Trump administration are reportedly 
mulling over a plan to refuse to issue sanctions waivers to our 
European allies who intend to purchase oil from Iran, and the 
administration has reportedly drawn up plans to send 120,000 of our 
troops to the Middle East in response to alleged increased threats from 
Iran. But our allies in the region and around the world, including the 
French, the Brits, and the Germans, say that they have seen no such 
threat. All of this is happening in the absence of a Senate-confirmed 
Secretary of Defense.
  Earlier this week, I was out for a run a couple of miles from here. 
If you run from the Capitol down to the Lincoln Memorial and then turn 
around and sort of head back this way, you run by the Vietnam Veterans 
Memorial. Whenever I run alongside the memorial, I take my left hand, 
and with my fingers, I touch the names of 55,000 men and women who died 
in that war. I served with them. I am the last Vietnam veteran serving 
in the Senate. They died, and many of us risked our lives over a war 
that was based--really, premised--on an untruth; some would say a lie.

[[Page S2909]]

  In August 1964, then-President Lyndon Johnson announced that the 
North Vietnamese had engaged the U.S. Navy in the Gulf of Tonkin, and 
he asked Congress to pass a resolution supporting retaliatory attacks. 
The following day, he added these words to his request: ``The United 
States intends no rashness and seeks no wider war.'' Those were his 
words in August 1964.
  His administration went on to justify a bloody, almost decades-long 
war after that on the basis of that document--55,000 of my colleagues, 
my shipmates, my fellow marines, our soldiers, our airmen--55,000--
dead.
  We had a similar situation in Iraq. It did not involve the Gulf of 
Tonkin. It did not involve ships. It really didn't involve the 
Vietnamese. But there were allegations and assertions that the Iraqis 
were developing weapons of mass destruction. The President, the Vice 
President--in that case, Bush and Cheney--the Secretary of Defense, and 
the Secretary of State all asserted that the Iraqis were developing 
weapons of mass destruction and called on this Congress to give the 
President the power to respond appropriately.
  There are 55,000 names on the Vietnam memorial wall. There is no wall 
for the 4,100 men and women who died in Iraq after Congress provided 
President Bush the authority to respond to the alleged, perceived 
threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. While there is no wall 
on which to write those 4,100 names, those names are written in 
graveyards in every State in this country--4,100 men, women, some young 
and some old, who laid down their lives on what was really based on a 
lie--weapons of mass destruction.
  I want to say that lie was chiefly perpetrated, if I am not mistaken, 
by a fellow named John Bolton and that administration.
  Fast forward to today. We have seen this movie before. Thanks to John 
Bolton's rash actions in the Mideast, I can see it happening again.
  I don't want to see it happen again. I have been to too many funerals 
of people, servicemembers from Delaware, who died in Iraq. I don't want 
to go to any more. I don't want to have to visit any more spouses, 
children, parents, brothers, and sisters, as we have done in recent 
years with families who have been crushed by sorrow flowing from our 
engagement in Iraq.
  John Bolton has agitated for war with Iran for over a decade. He even 
wrote an op-ed about it. The op-ed was entitled: ``To Stop Iran's Bomb, 
Bomb Iran.''
  Under Mr. Bolton's leadership, the Trump administration's Iran policy 
is becoming ever more dangerous and ever more isolated from our 
traditional allies. This strategy could very well plunge us into 
another foreign war, if not corrected.
  This needless escalation is no way to conduct our foreign policy or 
to safeguard our national security. What is more, the administration's 
actions with respect to Iran haven't just increased the odds of an 
armed conflict. They have also damaged the credibility of our country 
around the world. If the United States cannot be trusted to uphold our 
commitments to those with whom we negotiate, there is little reason to 
believe that other countries, let alone nuclear-armed ones like North 
Korea, would be willing to negotiate with us in good faith.
  Now, there is another option here. Yesterday former U.S. Ambassador 
Wendy Sherman published an op-ed in the New York Times in which she 
wrote the following:

       But war is not inevitable. President Trump campaigned on 
     bringing troops home, not sending tens of thousands more to 
     the Middle East. Such a deployment, although inadequate for a 
     full-scale war, is more than foolish. War in the Middle East, 
     as we should have learned by now, is neither swift to end nor 
     sure to achieve its purpose.

  Reformists in Iran have expressed an interest in diplomatic solutions 
with the United States and our allies, including a possible prisoner 
exchange. The foreign minister of Iran, whom I first met a dozen years 
or so ago at the Iranian Ambassador's residence in New York City--not 
the Ambassador to the United States but the Ambassador to the United 
Nations, a fellow name Javad Zarif. It turned out that when I met him, 
I was impressed with how well-spoken he was. It turns out he had gone 
to undergraduate school at San Francisco State, I believe, in 
California. He is a really smart guy. He is not only well spoken but 
knew a lot about America and spoke English as well as any of us in the 
room. He went to graduate school in Denver, CO, and he ended up here as 
the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations.
  Later, when Ahmadinejab left office--Ahmadinejab was a bad guy, a 
really bad guy, and was President of Iran before Ruhani--Ahmadinejab 
sent Zarif back home, got him out of the United States, got him back to 
Iran, and he sort of disappeared until the new elections. Ruhani 
emerged as the more moderate--kind of a Gorbachev-type guy, really--
leader in Iran and said: Zarif, I would like you to be my foreign 
minister. That is like being their Secretary of State, a position that 
he still holds.
  Not long ago, about a couple of weeks ago, in that role, he suggested 
that we do a prisoner swap. We hold a number of people of Iranian 
descent who are in this country. They hold about a half dozen or so of 
our folks, I think mostly with dual citizenship, in their country. 
Foreign Minister Zarif said: Why don't we just do a straight-out 
prisoner swap?
  That would actually be a good start to maybe tamping down the 
rhetoric and to see if we can't find common ground with Iran again.
  During the 8 years of previous administrations, our foreign policy 
was designed to strengthen the standing of the moderates in Iran and to 
undermine the power of the hard-liners in that country. Actually, it 
worked--not perfectly, but it worked. The elections that they conducted 
a couple of years ago--6 years ago--reflect that.
  Sadly, this administration--I can't believe they did it 
intentionally, but their policy in the last just 2 years or a little 
over 2 years--what they have done is to undermine the effectiveness and 
the standing of the moderates in Iran, and they have rallied support of 
Iran around the extremists and around the hard-liners. It is just the 
opposite of what was done in the last administration.
  We have to be smarter than that. We have to be smarter than this. 
When I think about the contrast between the Trump administration's 
actions in North Korea and Iran, I can't help but wonder why there is 
such a stark contrast? I would not trust the leader of North Korea any 
further than I could throw him, and for this President to embrace this 
guy and to trust him in ways that befuddle me--and, I think, a lot of 
other folks, including folks in his party--is beyond me.
  But why has this administration been so determined to abrogate a 
carefully crafted deal that keeps Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon? 
Why will President Trump not work to ensure the freedom of Americans 
held in Iran? Well, part of the answer is provided by Thomas Friedman, 
a highly regarded famous journalist whose column appears from time to 
time in national newspapers.
  Tom Friedman wrote, a year or so ago, something called the ``Trump 
Doctrine.'' I think it provides an answer to the question: Why has 
President Trump been so determined to get us out of the JCPOA and to 
embrace a leader like the one we have over in North Korea?
  The ``Trump Doctrine'' from Tom Friedman goes something like this. He 
said: ``Obama built it, I broke it''--``I,'' being Trump--``you''--
including us here in this body--``fix it.'' That is it. ``Obama built 
it, I''--Donald Trump--``broke it--you''--the rest of us--``fix it.''
  I think my colleagues would agree that it would be a travesty if the 
President's determination to destroy President Obama's achievement--an 
achievement shared by others in this country and by our allies and 
friends in, among other places, Britain, France, and Germany--but our 
President's determination to destroy Barack Obama's achievement, the 
achievements of his administration--in this case, the Iran nuclear 
deal--led us into another endless war in the Middle East.
  I urge President Trump, as he has done in the case of North Korea, to 
engage in diplomacy and ratchet down tensions with Iran, rather than 
engaging in needless provocation.
  Mr. President, you meet with the President more than I do, but some 
of the times I have been with him in the last 2 years, whenever he 
mentions

[[Page S2910]]

George W. Bush, in the same breath he talks about how he got us into a 
war that cost us thousands of lives and has cost literally tens of 
billions of dollars--the Iraq war. So that would suggest to me that the 
idea of drawing more troops and a whole lot more money into a war with 
Iran has to be something you do with care.
  So on this 1-year anniversary of the Trump administration's pulling 
out of the Iran deal--I think, foolishly doing so--I would urge the 
President and his advisers to think carefully about what outcomes we 
really seek as a country. We should be prioritizing diplomacy at this 
time, not escalating tensions and risking war with American lives with 
no coherent strategy. It is my hope that cooler heads will prevail. It 
is also in America's best interest that they do.
  John Kennedy said a lot of things that are memorable, and one of my 
favorites is this: ``Never negotiate out of fear, but never be afraid 
to negotiate.''
  ``Never negotiate out of fear, but never be afraid to negotiate.'' I 
think we would be wise to remember those words with respect to Iran.
  The last thing I would say to the Presiding Officer, who is former 
military, is this. When I finish speaking, you are going to be 
succeeded by a Marine colonel who serves here from Alaska. We know 
people we serve with people who have given their lives up in combat in 
wars far away around the world.
  We are very proud in Delaware. The Dover Air Force Base may be the 
best airlift base in the world. There are 5,000 or 6,000 people who 
work there, mostly uniformed, and big planes, C-5s and C-17s. Maybe it 
is the best airlift base in the world.
  Dover Air Force Base is also home to a mortuary. A month ago, the 
bodies of three marines, one of whom is from Delaware, were brought 
back to this country. In this case, their vehicle in Afghanistan was 
blown up by a roadside bomb, and we lost three of them just like that. 
They are not the first, and, sadly, they will not be the last members 
of our Armed Services to come home.
  For one of the marines, Christopher Slutman, his body came home to 
his wife Shannon and to their three daughters, ages 4, 8, and 10. I 
have seen this movie before. I have seen it at Dover Air Force Base 
with countless bodies that have come back from overseas. I think about 
those kids every day, and I am sure my colleagues think about the men 
and the women from their States who have served, in some cases, with 
great courage and valor. But the idea that 55,000 of those colleagues 
of mine who served in Vietnam in a war that was premised on a lie and 
4,100 are buried in graveyards all over this country--we have to be 
smarter than that. We owe it to not just the families of those men and 
women who have died but to the ones who serve today and their families.
  ``Never negotiate out of fear, but never be afraid to negotiate.''
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska is recognized.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I am down here on the floor to do what I 
typically do on Thursday, which is talk about an Alaskan who is making 
a big difference in my State, somebody I refer to as the Alaskan of the 
Week.
  But, you know, this is the Senate and we have debates, and we are 
respectful in our debates, and there is no one in the Senate I respect 
more than my friend from Delaware, Senator Carper--his service in 
Vietnam and as a captain in the Navy. When he speaks, I listen, and I 
have respect. But I actually thought, very briefly--it wasn't what I 
was planning on doing, but I was just listening to someone I respect--I 
thought I would offer a bit of a counter view for those watching in the 
Gallery or on TV on what he just talked about.
  It is a really important issue, but I just happen to respectfully 
disagree with most--not everything, but most--of what my colleague just 
mentioned. So I am just going to touch on that before I talk about an 
Alaskan who is doing great work.
  Just listening to my colleague talk about President Trump's turning 
his back on Iran, the sanctions that we placed on Iran, which we all 
voted for here in the Senate, are antagonizing Iran. Foreign Minister 
Zarif is a moderate. Well, let me just touch on that. I think there is 
this new narrative that is starting to come out from my colleagues, 
and, again, I have a lot of respect for my good friend from Delaware, 
but about this kind of blame America first, blame Trump, as if the 
generals and admirals weren't advising him, and that Iran is some kind 
of this new innocent moderate that we are turning our back on and we 
are sanctioning them and antagonizing them. With all due respect to my 
colleague on the other of the aisle, this couldn't be further from the 
truth. Iran is no innocent. Iran is no innocent at all.
  Iran is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world and has 
been for decades. As for the JCPOA, which my colleague is lamenting, I 
read that. I certainly dug into that. I have been involved in our 
broader Iran isolation policy for many years. That was the first major 
foreign policy national security agreement in U.S. history that had a 
bipartisan majority of Senators and a bipartisan majority of House 
Members who were against it--against it, not for it. That did not have 
support in this body--certainly not in the Senate, not in the House, 
and not from the American people.
  So as for this myth that somehow this was this great agreement, it 
wasn't. It was a giveaway--billions to the largest state sponsor of 
terrorism, where in 10 years they are free to go develop nuclear 
weapons. This was not a good agreement, and this body said so. A 
bipartisan majority in the House and the Senate disagreed with 
President Obama. A partisan minority in the House and Senate, for the 
first time in U.S. history, on a national security agreement of this 
magnitude, somehow passed it.
  So there is this myth that this was supported by Congress. It wasn't. 
Democrats and Republicans opposed it--the majority in both Houses. And 
by the American people, it certainly wasn't.
  Remember, this is the country that, after the deal and during the 
deal, continued to say what? We want to wipe Israel off the map. It is 
not a really nice, innocent nation saying that: We want to wipe Israel 
off the map. They continue to say that.

  Here is the final thing. In my 4 years in the Senate, I have only 
heard one other U.S. Senator--Senator Cotton from Arkansas--even talk 
about this issue.
  Starting in 2004, 2005, I was a staff officer, as a marine, to the 
commander of U.S. Central Command, and there was top-secret information 
that started to show in the region--and we were out there a lot, the 
Middle East--that the Iranians were supplying the Iraqi Shia militia 
with very sophisticated improvised explosive devices that were killing 
our soldiers and our marines and our sailors. The Iranians, of course, 
denied it. They were lying.
  It all came out to be true. These were infrared tripwires, 
explosively formed projectiles that could punch through anything--
Abrams tanks, humvees--and if you were an American soldier and you got 
hit by one of these, you were pretty much dead.
  I asked the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in an open Armed 
Services Committee hearing how many American military members were 
killed by these Iranian IEDs, and over 2,000 was his answer--2,000. I 
have never heard any of my colleagues talk about that.
  So the notion that Foreign Minister Zarif was a moderate when he was 
negotiating with Secretary Kerry is belied by the facts. This Foreign 
minister literally had the blood of American soldiers on his hands.
  So I take these issues very seriously, like my colleague from 
Delaware does.
  There is this notion that our allies were all for the JCPOA. They 
weren't. Some of our most important allies--Israel, the Gulf Arab 
States, which we have been allies with for decades--were adamantly 
opposed, and they are the closest to Iran.
  So this notion that we are going to blame the administration--by the 
way, we keep talking about President Trump. He is getting advice from 
seasoned generals and admirals to reinforce our military presence in 
the region because they see threats.
  In the media right now, there is this narrative that the President is 
trying to drum up a war. What about the generals? What about General 
Dunford, a very well respected marine and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs? 
Are they doing this?

[[Page S2911]]

  I just came from reading some of the intel in the SCIF that is 
prompting this discussion. Of course, I can't talk about it, but I 
support what the administration is doing with regard to reinforcing our 
military capabilities in the region, and this is the reason: It sends a 
message to Iran that if they are going to try to do what they did in 
2004, 2005, and 2006, which is kill and wound thousands of our military 
members, we are going to have the capability to make them pay.
  I don't like seeing anyone coming through Dover Air Force Base, 
either, but over 2,000 of our troops were killed and wounded by these 
leaders of the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. The 
notion that somehow they are some kind of innocent country that we are 
antagonizing or ``turning our back on'' is not accurate. So watch out 
for the new narrative that the Iranians are the innocents and that 
somehow we are being provocative. What is provocative is killing our 
troops, which they have a long history of doing--in Lebanon, the 
marines--and we need to send a signal that if they are going to look at 
doing this again or trying to or trying to kill our diplomats, it is 
not going to be so easy this time.
  I support what is happening there, and I hope my colleagues will.
  We are going to get a briefing by the Secretary of State, the 
Secretary of Defense, and the CIA next week on this, which I think is 
appropriate. Let's remember who the real bad guys are. We are 
Americans. Yes, we have political differences, but somehow, if we start 
to make this narrative that Iran is the innocent and somehow the Trump 
guys--John Bolton, for example--are some kind of evil people--come on. 
Come on, really? The largest state sponsor of terrorism, responsible 
for killing and maiming and wounding thousands of American soldiers, 
the best and brightest in our country, and we are the bad guys? I don't 
think so.
  So watch out for that narrative. I certainly hope it is not going to 
be something my colleagues on the other side of the aisle start getting 
out there. It is already in the media. You have the former negotiator 
for President Obama making these statements that, somehow, poor Iran; 
all-bad America. I am not a big ``blame America first'' member, and I 
think we need to be really careful when we talk about trying to 
demonize our generals, admirals, and national security advisers and 
make the Iranians look like they are some kind of innocents when they 
are not.
  I wish more of my colleagues would talk about the number of dead 
military members killed and wounded by the Quds Force in Iran, because 
they never do. No one here ever talks about it. Amnesia.
  (Thereupon, Mr. Scott of Florida assumed the Chair.)