[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 191 (Monday, November 1, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7572-S7574]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE MIDDLE EAST

  Mr. CRUZ. Madam President, I rise today to discuss the growing 
threats to American national security and to the security of our 
friends and allies in the Middle East.
  Under President Obama and Vice President Biden, the policies put in 
place were a catastrophe for our allies in the Middle East and a boon 
to our enemies. They boosted the Muslim Brotherhood and criticized Arab 
governments that tried to crack down on religious extremists. They gave 
Palestinian groups tied to terrorism a veto over peace between our 
Israeli and Arab allies, and they elevated those groups.
  They pushed the catastrophic Obama-Iran nuclear deal, which 
dismantled pressure on Iran and put the Ayatollah on a path towards a 
nuclear arsenal, while sending pallets of cash in the dead of night as 
ransom for hostages.
  Of course, the Obama-Biden administration didn't tell the American 
people and didn't tell Congress what they were doing. Instead, they 
deliberately hid that information. They lied as long as they could 
about their policies, and they developed and built an echo chamber 
designed to drown out their critics.
  I rise today because history is repeating itself, because I am deeply 
worried that President Biden and the Biden-Harris administration are 
returning to the very worst policies and the very worst tactics of the 
Obama years and that the consequences are going to be far worse.
  Once again, the Biden-Harris administration is boosting the Muslim 
Brotherhood and other religious extremist groups in the Middle East. 
They are elevating the Palestinians at the expense of our Israeli and 
Arab allies, and they are dismantling pressure on Iran.
  And, once again, they are hiding those details from Congress. They do 
not want Congress to know, and they do not want the American people to 
know. And, in some cases, unfortunately, they are outright lying.
  I know that President Biden and his administration are refusing to 
answer, even lying about their Middle East policies, because I asked 
them. I asked them as part of questioning Barbara Leaf, the President's 
nominee to be the Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs.
  Over the next several minutes, I will discuss the answers I got back.
  Ms. Leaf has been--and will continue to be--at the center of the 
Biden-Harris administration's Middle East policy. She was responsible 
for Middle East policy from the very beginning of this administration 
as the senior director for Middle East and North African Affairs at the 
National Security Council. In her new position to which she has been 
nominated, she would be America's most senior diplomat for the Middle 
East.
  I asked Ms. Leaf written questions about Biden's administration's 
policies in multiple areas of Middle East policy, as part of her 
testimony in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Her 
answers ranged from deliberately nonresponsive to simply false and, 
throughout, thoroughly, deeply distressing.
  For example, right now, today, the Biden-Harris administration is 
withholding $130 million of assistance for security and 
counterterrorism from our Egyptian allies, allegedly on human rights 
concerns. What we don't know is exactly why they are doing it and 
exactly what the Biden-Harris administration is asking for.
  Under the Obama administration, the United States repeatedly, 
inexplicably boosted the Muslim Brotherhood, which openly advocated 
terrorism against the United States. Those extremists were boosted at 
the expense of moderate Arab allies, and they consistently misled the 
public about their goals.
  Here, the only reason the American public found out in the first 
place about this $130 million is because the Washington Post revealed 
it. The Biden-Harris administration didn't explain to the American 
people what they were doing. It was only the reporting of journalists 
that revealed it, and we still don't know enough. We don't know the 
details.
  The Post reported that the administration is withholding the aid 
until Egypt addresses certain human rights concerns. We don't know what 
they are. They apparently include releasing 16 unnamed prisoners. We 
don't know who they are.
  So I asked Ms. Leaf about these details. I asked about the 16 people. 
I asked for their names, their institutional affiliations, what they 
were charged with. I also asked if they were American citizens. And if 
they were not, I asked whether they were involved in organizations that 
push Islamic extremism or anti-Semitism.
  Ms. Leaf is obviously very familiar with the case. She wrote back 
over 1,000 words of highly technical responses. Here is just a third of 
her answer. That is the part we could fit on the poster board. Lots of 
words, lots of numbers, but, as you can see, not a single detail that I 
requested was provided.
  Of the 16 people the Biden-Harris administration is demanding that 
Egypt release, you will see not a single name--not a one. Congress 
doesn't get to know who those 16 people are. The American people don't 
get to know who those 16 people are. The answer from Ms. Leaf to the 
Senate Foreign Relations Committee is, to not put too fine a point on 
it, Go jump in a lake.

[[Page S7573]]

  How many of those 16 are affiliated with terrorist organizations?
  The answer from Ms. Leaf: Go jump in a lake.
  How many of them are American citizens?
  The answer from Ms. Leaf: Go jump in a lake.
  Why is that? Why is that--that the Biden-Harris administration is 
extorting Egypt to release 16 prisoners, and yet they are embarrassed 
to say who those prisoners are?
  Well, we do have some public hints about the sort of people that the 
White House and the congressional Democrats maybe tried to coerce our 
Egyptian allies into releasing. Buried inside a very recent Senate 
appropriations report, there is an instruction that seems very much 
like what we are seeing with these secret conditions. It came 
presumably from Senate Democrats, although we don't know who. No Senate 
Democrat has stood forward to own this language, but there is a Senate 
Democrat who authored this language.
  It says:

       In making the certification required by subsection 
     (a)(3)(A), the Secretary of State shall consider the cases of 
     Ola Al-Qaradawi, Hosam Khalaf, Salah Soltan, Abdulrahman 
     Tarek, and Mohamed El-Baqer. The Committee urges that humane 
     treatment and fair trials be afforded these and other 
     prisoners in Egypt.

  So, apparently, for some unnamed Democrat who is unwilling to put his 
or her name to it, these names are people the United States should 
champion, and it suggests the sorts of people the Biden-Harris 
administration may be trying to extort Egypt into releasing.
  Who are they?
  Well, let's start with Salah Soltan. Who is Salah Soltan? He is a 
Muslim Brotherhood propagandist. He is a hate preacher. He is someone 
who goes on TV over and over again and preaches the most vicious sorts 
of libel against Jews.
  Why are Senate Democrats trying to release vicious anti-Semites? If 
you go back to the appropriation language, why are they suggesting in 
the appropriation language that the United States should be fighting to 
release that anti-Semite and hate preacher?
  We don't know because Senate Democrats aren't defending that 
position, and the administration refuses to answer.
  Who are some of the other people on that list?
  Well, you have Mohamed El-Baqer. He was a Salafist youth activist. He 
was part of the Revolutionary Youth who started the revolution, and he 
has been implicated in security violations.
  How about Ola al-Qaradawi? She is the daughter of Yosef al-Qaradawi, 
who is one of the major voices for jihad inside the Muslim Brotherhood. 
The paper trail on her is deliberately opaque from both sides.
  How about Hosam Khalaf? He is Ola al-Qaradawi's husband, and he has 
been allegedly connected to a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot.
  How about Abdulrahman Tarek? Well, we don't know. His presence has 
not been accounted for publicly.
  And yet these names mysteriously appear in a Senate appropriations 
report. When I asked Ms. Leaf about it, she provided 1,000 words and 
not a single name.
  And I will tell you that, actually, the names on that list are not 
secrets from Congress. They have been provided to Congress in a 
classified form. So the Presiding Officer and I can go into a secure 
SCIF, and we can read it in the SCIF. We can read the names.
  You know what we are not allowed to do?
  Tell anyone what the names are.
  Why is it that those names are classified?
  They are classified because President Biden and Vice President Harris 
don't want the American people to know who it is they are trying to 
release.
  There is no reasonable justification for those names to be 
classified. They are extorting our friend and ally, Egypt, to get 16 
people released from jail, and they refuse to tell us who.
  The American people have a right to know if the Biden administration 
is trying to pressure our allies to release Muslim Brotherhood 
extremists; if the Biden administration is trying to get our allies to 
release anti-Semites; and, if they are, to hear a justification for 
why. But Ms. Leaf, instead, simply defies the Senate and refuses to 
answer.
  Let's turn now to Israel.
  During the Trump administration, there was a decision to stand 
shoulder to shoulder with Israel, which led to an historic flowering of 
peace across the region. The name and framework for those peace 
agreements was the Abraham Accords.
  This was something that the Obama administration said would never 
happen and something, unfortunately, tragically, that they were 
actively hostile to. The Obama administration insisted that Israel 
would have to make massive concessions to the Palestinians on their 
sovereignty--on the security of Israel--before there could ever be 
peace deals between the Israelis and their Arab neighbors.
  When asked whether there could ever be peace like the Abraham Accords 
without a prior deal with the Palestinians, then-Secretary of State 
John Kerry said: ``There will be no separate peace between Israel and 
the Arab world. . . . No, no, no, and no.''
  No ambiguity to what they thought--they don't want peace without 
massive concessions from Israel to the Palestinians.
  Well, turned out President Obama and Secretary Kerry were tragically 
wrong, as they were on so many issues, and President Trump demonstrated 
that to the world. And, sadly, President Biden and Vice President 
Harris have never forgiven our Israeli allies and our Arab allies for 
that--for demonstrating that with strong, resolute clarity from the 
United States' unequivocal support of Israel, that peace could be the 
result. That was an outcome anathema to the foreign policy objectives 
of the current administration. As a result, there are many in the Biden 
administration that are enormously, deeply, seethingly hostile to the 
Abraham Accords.
  At the beginning of the Biden administration, the State Department 
even issued internal guidance prohibiting the use of the phrase 
``Abraham Accords.'' Those words were verboten. You may not say those 
words. The instructions were instead to call them the ``normalization 
agreements.''
  George Orwell is, no doubt, looking down from Heaven and smiling at 
the power of language to be redefined. There are no Abraham Accords. 
Now, they are normalization agreements.
  Once again, the only reason that the public knows about this is 
because journalists revealed it. This time, it was the ``Washington 
Free Beacon,'' but the details have never been clarified.
  After those public reports, the Biden administration was forced to at 
least partially reverse that policy. They insisted they fully support 
the accords that must never be named. But it is not clear how true or 
how broad that reversal has been.
  On September 13, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Thomas-Greenfield, gave 
a speech about the Abraham Accords in which she stubbornly refused to 
utter the words ``Abraham Accords.'' Instead, following, apparently, 
the State Department guidance, she simply used the bland term 
``normalization agreements.''
  On October 13, Secretary Blinken met with Foreign Minister Lapid, and 
the spokesperson issued a formal readout from that meeting. Once again, 
the formal readout from the State Department carefully eschewed any 
mention of the Abraham Accords and used the bland term ``regional 
normalization efforts.''
  This is conscious. This is deliberate. This is a pattern. It is a 
classic example of where congressional oversight is called for.
  Madam President, many Senate Democrats claim to support the Abraham 
Accords. Now, I would note, I was at the White House for the signing of 
the Abraham Accords. Not a single Senate Democrat showed up for that 
historic peace agreement--none. Presumably because of partisan loathing 
of President Trump. But, nonetheless, congressional Democrats say they 
support the accords today. If that is true, we need to see 
congressional oversight.
  So I asked Ms. Leaf for the specific guidance that was issued to the 
State Department. Give Congress--give the Senate--the written guidance 
prohibiting reference to the Abraham Accords. We know about it from 
public reports in the media. She and the State Department refused. They 
refused to provide that guidance to Congress. They refused to show it 
to the public. And, in doing it, it is not accidental.

[[Page S7574]]

  She refuses to answer this question because they want to hide it from 
the American people, just like the names of the 16 prisoners they are 
demanding that Egypt release. Presumably, if the American people knew 
those names, knew the affiliations, knew the backgrounds, they would be 
outraged. Likewise, if the American people read the written guidance 
issued by this State Department, prohibiting uttering of the words 
``Abraham Accords,'' then the charade so many Democrats try to play in 
supporting those accords would be that much harder to maintain.
  A third example, turning to Iran, perhaps more than anything else, 
first and foremost, this administration wants to return to the 
catastrophic Obama-Biden-Iran nuclear deal and to dismantle meaningful 
sanctions against the theocratic regime in Iran. From the earliest 
hours of the administration, the effort began to do exactly that.
  As part of that push, the administration has quietly, and sometimes 
secretly, reduced pressure on Iran and released frozen Iranian funds. 
But the Ayatollah wants to see just how much he can get, and he may not 
think that President Biden will ever do anything meaningful. If the 
United States isn't going to impose pressure on Iran, there is no 
reason for the Ayatollah to return to the deal at all. He doesn't need 
to take ``yes'' for an answer for a deal because he is getting 
everything anyway.
  And so since very early in the administration, the Biden-Harris 
officials have contemplated what has been called a ``less for less'' 
agreement in which they would reduce some pressure on Iran for 
something less than full compliance. You will only nuke some of us.
  Once again, we only know about the existence of these considerations 
from public reports. In February and again over the summer, Reuters 
reported on administration officials contemplating these deals, the so-
called ``less for less'' deals. We here in Congress know a little more 
but not much.
  Congress and the public deserve to know what is being contemplated to 
reduce pressure on the Iranian regime, the world's leading state 
sponsor of terrorism and a regime that seeks--and, I believe, may well 
be willing--to use nuclear weapons to murder millions of Americans and 
millions of our allies.
  I believe that if the Ayatollah had the ability to murder millions of 
Americans or millions of Israelis in the blink of an eye, the odds are 
far too high that this theocratic zealot, who glories in death and 
suicide, would be willing to do so.
  And so I asked Ms. Leaf for the details of such agreements. Here is 
what she said in response:

       There have been no such arrangements, deals, or agreements 
     contemplated to reduce pressure on Iran.

  That statement is false. It is categorically, directly, unequivocally 
false. It is false testimony in writing to the Senate Foreign Relations 
Committee. Ms. Leaf knows it is false, and the State Department 
handlers who transmitted her written answer to the Senate know that it 
is false.
  What is the Biden administration trying to hide? What deep details 
don't they want us to know?
  This isn't just about policy disagreements, although I disagree 
vehemently with many of this administration's policies. I understand 
some people, some Democrats, will disagree. But even more 
fundamentally, this is about transparency and oversight. On that, there 
should be no disagreement.
  And these questions are ones that go to the very core of this 
administration's Middle East foreign policy and of American national 
security. What extremists are President Biden and Vice President Harris 
trying to empower? Whom do they view as allies worth supporting in the 
region? What deals are being contemplated with the Iranian regime?
  I asked Ms. Leaf for these details. She has, after all, been working 
right in the center of Middle East issues for this administration. She 
and the Biden-Harris administration are refusing to answer. The public 
has a right to know.
  Let me also point out that President Biden, in recent days, said 
publicly that if Iran enters into a new nuclear deal, the United States 
would stay bound by it in perpetuity as long as Iran didn't renege on 
that deal. I want to be absolutely clear on something: President Biden 
has zero constitutional authority to make that commitment.
  The Ayatollah in Iran could be forgiven for misunderstanding that. 
The Ayatollah, after all, is a total dictator with the ability to line 
up anyone who disagrees and execute them on the spot. But, thankfully, 
the President of the United States does not enjoy such dictatorial 
powers.
  Under our Constitution, there are two ways, and two ways only, that a 
President can make a binding commitment on the United States of 
America. The first is through passing a law that passes the Senate, 
passes the House, and is signed into law by the President. If President 
Biden wishes to do so with any Iran deal, he is welcome to do so.
  The second and the way, traditionally, that foreign policies 
agreements are handled is through a treaty--a treaty that is submitted 
to the Senate and ratified by two-thirds of the Senate. The chances 
that the Biden-Harris whatever disastrous nuclear deal they work out 
with Iran, the chances that that would be ratified by two-thirds of the 
Senate I can quantify exactly. There is 0.00 percent.

  President Biden knows that. He knows that because the Senate has been 
unequivocal that this deal is disastrous and harmful for American 
national security, harmful for Israel, and harmful for our allies. And 
so, instead, President Biden makes an empty promise that he cannot 
commit.
  In that, he is following in the footsteps of President Obama. 
President Obama made a similar promise, and President Obama knew it was 
a lie when he said it, and President Biden knows it is a lie when he 
says it.
  History demonstrated that President Obama told a falsehood because 
the next Republican President, Donald J. Trump, ripped the Obama-Iran 
deal to shreds and withdrew from the deal, which was the right 
decision. I urged President Trump to do that.
  Our allies and our enemies should mark my words on this: Regardless 
of whatever empty promises President Biden makes, he lacks 
constitutional authority to bind a subsequent administration. And I 
believe it is 100 percent certain that the next Republican President 
who is sworn into office will once again rip to shreds any disastrous 
deal negotiated with the Ayatollah and Iran.
  So President Biden has 3 more years to try to give away the store, to 
try to send billions of dollars, perhaps on pallets in the dead of 
night like Barack Obama did, to fund theocratic terrorists who want to 
murder Americans and murder Israelis. But the Ayatollah needs to know, 
Europe needs to know, our friends need to know, our enemies need to 
know that President Biden's promises are empty words that will expire 
the instant his Presidency is over.
  We don't have a dictator in this country. We have a constitutional 
republic. If President Biden wants to bind subsequent administrations, 
he can negotiate a treaty, submit a treaty to the Senate, and get it 
ratified. But he doesn't have the votes, and so instead he makes empty 
promises.
  If President Biden and Vice President Harris were proud of the 
policies they are pursuing in the Middle East, they would give the 
American people the list of the 16 prisoners they are trying to force 
Egypt to release.
  We know that multiple of the names Senate Democrats have put in the 
appropriations language are affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. We 
know one is an anti-Semitic hate preacher. And we suspect that the 
administration knows full well that if it released those names, it 
couldn't defend them to the American people. It is counting on darkness 
and secrecy to hide their conduct.
  I believe the Senate--both Republicans and Democrats--have an 
obligation to the American people to shine a light. If you are going to 
extort our allies to release prisoners, tell us now: Are they 
affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood? Are they anti-Semites? Are they 
a national security threat to the United States or our allies? The 
American people deserve to know.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________