[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 109 (Thursday, June 27, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4645-S4648]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAN

  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I am going to try to do this in about 12 
minutes, since I am not sure how many people are left to speak tonight 
and I know the staff worked hard and we will be up early tomorrow 
voting on the pending Udall amendment. That is what I want to talk 
about.
  I have watched all week the debate on some of these topics. I think 
it is a really good debate, actually. In some ways, I am very pleased 
the amendment has been offered because it has given us an opportunity 
to talk about a topic I don't think we have talked enough about; that 
is, foreign policy, the security threats before our country, and, in 
particular, what the role of Congress is in all of this.
  There are a couple of things I want to say at the outset. Here is the 
first. A lot of people who cover this stuff in the news like very 
simplistic terms. It makes it easier to write the articles and makes it 
easier to describe the circumstances. The terms people like to use are 
``hawk,'' or ``dove,'' or ``warlike.'' I am not in favor of war. I have 
actually never advocated for a military attack on Iran, in these 
circumstances especially. There are a lot of reasons for it, but it 
will take me more than 15 minutes to explain it all. Suffice it to say, 
it is certainly not the first or the second.
  The policy of the United States in Iran today is the one I support; 
that is, crippling economic sanctions that deny them the money to do 
the bad things they do but also a forced posture that we are prepared 
with enough people there in the military, so if they do attack us, we 
can defend ourselves.
  I want to say at the outset that I am not here today to speak in 
favor of war or to call for war but to speak about reality and the 
situation as we face it today.
  The second thing I want to point to is there is this notion out there 
that there is some clear-cut constitutional limitation on the President 
when it comes to the use of force in virtually every circumstance and 
that somehow the current President is being enabled by the Members of 
his party here to do whatever he wants. That is just not true. I will 
explain why in a moment.
  I want to begin with why we are even here. It is one of the topics 
that has been touched on this week, which I think deserves a direct 
response. I heard a number of Senators who came to the floor. I watched 
the debate last night, and there will be another one tonight within the 
Democratic Party. You almost get a sense that what they are arguing is 
that Iran was under control and wasn't doing anything wrong until 
Donald Trump came along and pulled us out of the Iran deal. That is 
just not true. That is patently false.
  The only thing Iran wasn't doing is enriching uranium beyond a 
certain threshold. That is not necessarily a bad thing that they 
weren't doing it, but that is the only thing that deal covered.
  Here is what Iran was still doing. Iran was still sponsors terrorism. 
You ask, why is it that they sponsor terrorism? Iran wants to be the 
dominant power in the Middle East, and one of the ways they seek to 
achieve it is to find all of these groups--Hezbollah, Shia militias in 
Iraq and Syria, the Houthis in Yemen--and empower those groups.

  They have an organization called the IRGC, which is the real military 
and the real power in Iran. Underneath the IRGC, there is an 
organization called the Quds Force, which is their covert operations 
unit led by a guy named General Soleimani. He goes around the entire 
region sponsoring these groups--training them and providing weapons.

[[Page S4646]]

  Here is what they hope to do. If they ever get into a conflict, they 
will use these groups to attack people. Why do they use those groups? 
No. 1, because Iran doesn't have the ability to station troops all over 
the region. No. 2, it gives them deniability. They can say: We didn't 
attack you. It was the Houthis or Shia militia. It allows them some 
level of deniability while still inflicting pain.
  If you want to know what else Iran has done using that strategy, it 
has maimed or killed hundreds of American service men and women in 
Iraq. They didn't buy all those IEDs that were blowing up on Amazon; 
they didn't order them on eBay. They were built and supplied by the 
Iranians. That is who did it. There is no dispute about that.
  President Obama signed this Iran deal. Iran began to get more money 
into their treasury because they could now engage in certain economic 
activity. What did Iran do with that money? Let me tell you what they 
didn't do. They didn't build schools, roads, and bridges. They didn't 
reinvest it in their economy or their education system. Iran took the 
money they were making from the Iran deal. The Iran deal now allows 
them to engage in commerce that they weren't allowed to. They took that 
extra money, and they used it to sponsor terrorism--to sponsor 
Hezbollah in Lebanon.
  Today Hezbollah not only has more missiles than they had 10 or 15 
years ago, but their missiles are better than they were. They could 
now, theoretically, overwhelm Israel's defenses with barrages of 
attacks. They have guidance systems on those missiles now. In fact, 
they have gotten so much assistance from Iran, they don't even need to 
ship these missiles to them anymore. They can make them themselves.
  What about the Houthis? The Houthis are a group that already existed, 
but they were only able to make the gains they made in Yemen with 
Iranian support. You read in the news every day about these missiles 
and drones used by the Houthis to attack Saudi Arabia. It doesn't get a 
lot of coverage, but where do you think they bought these things from? 
Do you think they made them? We didn't sell them to them. Those are 
Iranian missiles. All of it is provided by this additional money they 
got their hands on.
  They also conduct cyber attacks.
  Here is the most dangerous part of the Iran deal. Yes, it dealt with 
uranium enrichment and supervision, but it did nothing with the missile 
system. To have a nuclear threat, you have to do three things; No. 1, 
have a bomb designed, which is the easiest part, believe it or not; No. 
2, have the industrial capacity to enrich uranium to weapons grade, and 
that is just a function of time and willingness. Once you can enrich at 
any level, you can keep going. That is what the deal dealt with; and 
the third thing you have to do is deliver it. You have to launch it on 
something to reach your target.
  The deal with Iran did nothing on the missiles. It gave them more 
money, and they used some of that money to build missiles that now have 
longer ranges. Where Iran, 5 or 10 years ago, had a more limited range 
of places to strike, today Iran can strike virtually every capital in 
the Middle East and every base in the region. That is where they were 
putting this money.
  The Trump administration came in and said: Let me get this straight. 
We did a deal with Iran. They get a lot more money. They use that money 
to build better missiles, to sponsor terrorism, to conduct cyber 
attacks, and the only thing is they can't enrich uranium for a period 
of time until the deal goes away? That is not a bad deal for Iran 
because what they were banking on is that in 10 years, we would be 
focused on something else. The world would forget, and all of a sudden 
they would be able to enrich.
  The deal was a fraud. It did nothing to make Iran less dangerous. The 
only thing the deal did is slow down their enrichment capability, but 
at no time are they less than 1\1/2\ to 2 years away to breaking out to 
weapons grade. At some point, they would--at least they retain that 
very option.
  This idea that somehow Iran wasn't doing anything wrong but pulling 
out of the deal caused all these tensions is just not true. Even with a 
deal in place, Iran was arming and training and equipping all these 
groups in the region and conducting cyber attacks and building these 
missiles unabated. That is what was going on. Now they are feeling it.
  By the way, today Iran is generating a lot less revenue than they 
were when the deal was in place. We are at a point now where even 
Hezbollah is out there openly saying they have had to cut back. They 
have budget cuts. They are putting out leaflets and things they posted 
publicly inside of Lebanon asking people to donate to Hezbollah because 
Iran can't donate as much as they used to. They have real fiscal 
constraints. That is not a bad thing. Likewise, with some of these Shia 
militias and others, it has constrained Iran's ability to operate.
  Iran has decided the only way to reverse this is to force us back to 
some negotiation at some point to either, A, intimidate us back into 
the deal or, B, force us to the negotiating table to get something like 
it. How can they do that?
  How can Iran position itself with some strength in order to get into 
that kind of negotiation? They can't sanction us economically. The only 
thing they can do is these terrorist attacks--these sort of attacks 
that started to connect. That is what they are in the pattern of doing.
  Do you realize, last week, over a period of 7 days, every single day 
there was a Shia militia attack against a U.S. installation? Luckily, 
nobody died, but that was happening. That is what they were trying and 
are trying to do.
  They were trying to position themselves and accumulate some strength 
so they can get into future negotiations from a position of strength. 
The only way they think they can do that is by threatening to attack us 
and, most interestingly, to attack us with some level of deniability. 
You have this tanker out there in the middle of the Gulf, which is a 
huge ocean, and suddenly some mines blow up, and you have journalists 
and politicians saying, how do we know it was Iran? Who was it? It 
wasn't the Swedes. It wasn't the Germans. It wasn't the French. It 
wasn't Luxembourg. There is only one organization in that part of the 
world with the capability to do what happened--Iran. Everybody knows 
it.
  The only reason some countries don't admit it is because then they 
would have to do something about it. If you are a European country and 
you want the Iran deal to come back in place and you want to save it, 
you can't say you know Iran put those mines on those ships. If you say 
that, you have to pull out of the deal. That is why they wouldn't 
acknowledge it.
  We have them on video. I heard people ask how we know those were 
Iranians. This is ridiculous stuff. By the way, the mines look 
identical to the ones Iran makes. So they did that. That was their 
plan, OK? Their plan was to attack us using other forces but to have 
some level of deniability. ``It was not us.''

  They also know that there are divisions in American politics and that 
the President is unpopular in many countries. A lot of people around 
the world and in the United States would love nothing more than to say 
``Yes, how do we know it was Iran?'' for different reasons. That is 
what they were banking on, but then they shot down an unmanned U.S. 
vehicle, and they admitted it because that would have been very 
difficult to deny. That is what really kicked off a lot of this 
argument that we are now hearing.
  I want everybody to remember, if you go back 3 or 4 weeks, that there 
were people in the building and people on television--I saw them--
commentators and others--who were basically implying that this was all 
not true, that there was no threat emanating from Iran, that it wasn't 
doing anything unusual. Now they are admitting that Iran is doing 
something unusual and dangerous, but 3 or 4 weeks ago, they were 
basically implying that this was all being made up by people who wanted 
a war.
  Think that through logically. That means there would be dozens and 
dozens of career service men and women in the U.S. Armed Forces and in 
the Pentagon who would be, basically, lying to us about this. That is 
absurd.
  So we get to the point of how this really got us here. It wasn't the 
deal with Iran or the pulling out of the deal that caused this. This 
has always been. This is what Iran has always done, and it has been 
doing it for two decades

[[Page S4647]]

now and longer. To somehow act as if Iran is more belligerent today 
than it was 6 months ago or 6 years ago is just not true. It is just 
that the threats have become more imminent directly against us.
  When you look at this amendment, the amendment is basically designed 
to say that the President cannot enter into a war unless Congress 
approves it, which is an interesting dynamic.
  No. 1, when you hear people saying you need authority from Congress, 
what they are talking about is the War Powers Resolution. In the 
aftermath of Vietnam and that era, Congress said, from now on, we are 
not getting into any more of these undeclared wars. If a President is 
going to commit service men and women for an extended period of time, 
it has to come through Congress.
  No President--no administration--has ever accepted that resolution as 
being in the Constitution. From that point forward, every single 
administration--Democrat and Republican--has taken the position that 
this is an unconstitutional infringement on the power of the Commander 
in Chief. That has been the official position of every administration, 
Republican and Democrat, since that passed.
  Nonetheless, on various occasions, Presidents have come to Congress 
for authority, which I think is a smart thing to do, especially for an 
extended engagement, because we are stronger and our policies are more 
effective when Congress and the American people are behind you. That is 
why President George W. Bush sought the authorization for Afghanistan 
and why he sought it for Iraq. It was the right thing to do, and it 
made sense. Yet no President has ever admitted that it is 
constitutional, and I share that view.
  For a moment, let's assume that it were. Well, that resolution lays 
out three things that must happen before a President, a Commander in 
Chief, can commit U.S. forces to a hostility, to a war, to a fight.
  The first thing is that there has to be a declaration of war. That is 
in the Constitution too. Congress can declare war.
  The second is that Congress can authorize the use of force. That is 
when you hear all of this talk about the authorization for use of 
military force, the AUMF. That is what we had in Afghanistan, and that 
is what we had in Iraq. That is what a lot of people around here think 
we need if we are going to do something with Iraq.
  There is a third component they like to ignore, and the third 
component is that a President can institute U.S. military action if 
Congress declares war, if Congress authorizes the use of force, or, No. 
3, if there is an emergency that causes us to respond to an attack 
against the United States, our territories, our holdings, or our Armed 
Forces.
  I want to tell you that if a Shia militia attacks a U.S. base in 
Iraq, this is a pretty clear attack on the Armed Forces. If it shoots 
down one of our unmanned, unarmed platforms over international 
airspace, that is an attack on our Armed Forces. If they try to kidnap 
or murder an ambassador or a diplomat by attacking our Embassy, that is 
an attack on a U.S. territory since embassies are sovereign 
territories.
  If you look at what the administration has done, the only thing the 
administration has done when it has come to the use of force is it has 
made sure that we have had enough ships and enough airplanes and 
enough personnel and enough assets in the Middle East so, if we are 
attacked, we can respond. That is the only thing it has done.

  I don't know how you read the plain text of the language that they 
are wrapping themselves around--those who criticize what the 
administration has done--and not realize that it is fully authorized. 
If we are attacked, the President doesn't just have a right to 
respond--he has an obligation.
  Think of the reverse. If the Iranians were to attack a facility in 
Iraq and murder 100 Americans who would be working at an embassy or 
diplomats or if they were to kill 200 soldiers, the first questions 
that every one of the President's critics would be asking on TV would 
be: Why didn't we have enough forces in the region to protect them? Why 
didn't we have a plan to save them? There would be congressional 
hearings, and there would be Members of Congress who would scream at 
the administration: Why didn't you have people there to save them?
  In anticipating that this could happen, our military leaders, in 
their looking at the threats and understanding the environment, asked 
the administration to send additional forces so they may be prepared--
to be in a position of having enough people and assets to respond in 
case of an attack.
  I will go further than that.
  Imagine the President is given verifiable information that an attack 
is imminent by Iran or one of its proxies and that the only way to save 
American lives is to wipe out the place from which it is going to 
launch the attack. Even if you acted first, that is self-defense. You 
are getting ahead of preventing an attack, not to mention the fact that 
the best way to respond to an attack is to prevent it from happening in 
the first place, and having a force posture in the region is one of the 
best ways to do that. That is the only thing that has been done here.
  This amendment is just not necessary because, in assuming they are 
arguing that the War Powers Resolution makes pretty clear what 
Congress's power and role are in all of this, in the very text of that 
resolution, it makes clear that a President has a right to introduce 
military forces and to use military force to defend Americans, to 
defend America, and to defend our Armed Forces.
  So why do we need language that says that a second time? Some would 
say: Well, it is redundant, and it is already the law. Why not just 
vote for it again?
  That is the final and, perhaps, the most important point in all of 
this--that the timing couldn't really be worse. It is not necessary, 
but the redundancy here is actually damaging, and here is why.
  I think sometimes we make a terrible mistake in American politics. We 
ascribe our attributes to those of the leaders of other countries. When 
we hear that the President of Iran said something, we think Iran's 
President and his system is like ours. They are not. The President of 
Iran doesn't have one-tenth the power of our President, meaning there 
is a Supreme Leader, and everything goes to the Supreme Leader, a 
cleric. That is where the power really resides.
  No. 2, we make a terrible mistake of believing that they truly 
understand us, our systems, and our debates when they don't, especially 
the Ayatollah. He is not a world traveler nor a constitutional expert 
nor a consumer of a varied amount of news and information from around 
the world nor a nuanced person who understands that this amendment, for 
example, is never going to become law.
  Here is what they do believe, and I encourage all Members here to go 
out and inform themselves as to this. As a Senator, one has the 
opportunity to do it. They do believe that this President cannot 
respond. They believe that this President cannot and would not respond. 
They believe that there is a threshold--that there are x numbers of 
Americans they can kill and that there are certain types of attacks 
they can get away with without getting a response back. That is what 
they believe.
  Why do they believe it?
  No. 1, it is that our President has talked on various occasions about 
withdrawing all Americans from the region. So they begin by believing, 
by and large, that we don't even want to be there.
  No. 2, they believe it because they look at our domestic politics, 
and they say: I have heard the debates, and I watched 5 minutes of CNN 
or some other network the other night, and I heard people on there who 
were from Congress or wherever who told the President he can't do this 
and can't do that. There is no support in America for responding, so 
the President is constrained in what he is able to do.
  Why is that a problem?
  It is because that is where you miscalculate. That is where what they 
think would trigger a response and what will actually trigger a 
response are two very different things.
  If this thing were to pass--and I know there are still a couple of 
people who are thinking about voting for it--this would not be reported 
as an amendment that had passed on a bill but that was never going to 
become law because it was never going to get signed with that in there. 
That is not

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how it would be reported. In fact, if there were a close vote on it, as 
I anticipate there will be, the way it would be reported would be as 
``even a handful of Republicans and virtually every Democrat voted to 
send the President a message of `we don't want you using Armed Forces 
in wars against Iran.' '' That is how it would be reported. That is how 
they would read it. It would only reinforce this belief among some in 
that regime that they can go further than they actually can.
  I don't mean to say this to argue that there are Members of this body 
here who are deliberately putting the men and women of our Armed Forces 
in danger. I am telling them I don't know if they have thought through 
that part of it. What we do here and how it is perceived in other parts 
of the world, especially in a reclusive organization such as the regime 
in Iran, are often two very different things.
  The danger with this amendment is that it is going to confirm to 
several hard-liners in that regime that the President is constrained, 
that America's President will not be able to respond, and that they 
will be able to get away with more than they actually will get away 
with.

  In some ways, ironically, I believe that even a big vote on this--
but, certainly, the passage of it--increases the chance of war. I say 
that because, if they miscalculate and they read into this an 
opportunity to attack at a higher level without taking a retaliatory 
response, they are going to do it. Then they are going to be wrong, and 
then the retaliation will come. Then it is on. Then we can't predict 
what will happen next.
  What happens next is terrifying to even contemplate because what 
happens next could be a Hezbollah strike against Israel and Israel's 
responding 10 times stronger. It could be Hezbollah's moving to abduct, 
kill, murder American diplomats or personnel inside of Lebanon; it 
could be Shia militias throughout Iraq and Syria attacking U.S. 
personnel; it could be increased Houthi attacks not just into Saudi 
Arabia but potentially even hitting civilian populations and Saudi 
Arabia's responding back. What could come next is a spiraling series of 
events that could lead to a dangerous regional war. That is not an 
exaggeration. Neither is it an exaggeration to believe that a 
miscalculation on the part of Iran and what it can get away with would 
trigger that.
  This is an unnecessary amendment because, if you accept the War 
Powers Resolution as valid under our Constitution--I do not--it already 
reads that the President has a right to respond in self-defense. The 
administration has made it very clear that this is the only way it 
intends to use it. It has made it abundantly clear. In fact, its force 
posture proves it. If you look at what we have in the region--the 
number of ships and the number of people--we are not postured for an 
invasion or an all-out war. We are postured for defensive operations 
and retaliatory strikes to an attack, and that is what the 
administration says it intends to do.
  What it intends to do is to continue forward, strangling the sources 
of financing that the Iranian regime is using to sponsor terrorism and 
its ballistic missile program and having enough force in the region to 
protect our men and women who serve us if they were to come under 
attack. The President is allowed to do that in the Constitution and in 
the War Powers Resolution.
  All this amendment does is create a dangerous opportunity to be 
misread and to cause Iran to do something, and that will trigger a 
response. Then we will have a war. For those who are considering still 
voting for this because they want to reassert Congress's role, this is 
the wrong time and place in which to do it.
  I will close with this. I don't agree with all of the President's 
foreign policy views. I can tell you, for example, that I do believe 
that openly talking about getting out of the Middle East as soon as 
possible has emboldened some of this thinking that America is 
constrained and that we really don't have the dedication or the 
commitment to see this through if we are attacked. Yet, in fairness, 
this President is far less likely to get into a war or to start one 
than was his predecessor--or his two predecessors, actually. He showed 
great restraint the other day.
  It strikes me that not only is this unnecessary from a policy 
perspective, it is also unnecessary from a personality perspective. 
This is not a President who is looking to start wars. This is a 
President who is looking to get out of the ones we are already in. 
Again, I just don't know why we would run the risk of putting something 
out there that could be misconstrued and lead to an attack when we have 
a President who has no intention of starting a war, when we have a 
military posture in the region that would not support an offensive 
military operation or anything close to what Afghanistan or Iraq was 
like, and when we have this danger of miscalculation.
  The amendment has been filed, and there will be a vote on it 
tomorrow. I just hope that the handful of people still thinking about 
it will consider all of these points.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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