[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 102 (Wednesday, June 17, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2883-S2884]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAN

  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I have long wanted this war with Iran to 
end. Every single day, this war has become a deepening, cascading 
disaster for the American people as gas prices eclipse $6 a gallon in 
many places, as Americans are killed, as new wars break out in the 
region, as farms go bankrupt with the ballooning diesel prices. Every 
single day this war has gone on, it has become a worse debacle for the 
United States and the American people.
  And so I have been prepared to swallow, basically, any deal to end 
the war, and my desire is still to stop this war. I knew the deal was 
likely going to be bad. I knew the deal was likely going to be 
humiliating for the United States of America. But I didn't know it was 
going to be this humiliating. I didn't know the deal was going to be 
this bad.
  The war needs to end, basically, upon any terms, but it is important 
for us tonight, as we are reading the details of this agreement, to 
understand how the terms of this agreement are final, clear, and total 
proof of how calamitous this war was and how it should be a lesson for 
both Republicans and Democrats, for this administration and every 
future administration, to never make this mistake again.
  So let's go through the terms of this agreement, which is all of two 
pages, negotiated by real estate developers cosplaying as diplomats. 
Let's start with the immediate commitments. What are the immediate 
commitments that Iran is making and the United States is making?
  Iran is making no new commitments. They are agreeing to open the 
strait. The strait was open before the war began.
  They are promising that they will not develop or obtain a nuclear 
weapon. They had already promised that before the war began.
  And they are agreeing to talk about restraining their nuclear 
research program. They were willing to talk about that prior to the war 
beginning.
  So Iran is making no new commitments that did not exist before the 
war. Before the war, they committed to keep the strait open. Before the 
war, they committed to develop no nuclear weapons. Before the war, they 
were willing to talk about the rest of their nuclear research program.
  What is the United States committing to in this agreement? Well, it 
is a little hard to decipher because of the terms, which are either 
mistakenly or deliberately fuzzy, but we at least know that the United 
States is committing immediately to release all oil

[[Page S2884]]

sanctions and to let Iran trade oil for free all around the world. That 
is billions--billions--of windfall dollars to the Iranian Treasury.
  The United States is agreeing to free up frozen Iranian money. It 
could be around $24 billion that will be going immediately to the U.S. 
Treasury.
  Those are the immediate commitments that the United States is making. 
OK. Let's talk about what is not in this agreement--what is not 
included in the commitments that are being made in the short term.
  Iran is making no commitments on reductions or controls on their 
missile program or their drone program or their support for terrorism.
  In fact, you can see a video today of Donald Trump, saying: I think 
it is cool for Iran to have missiles. I think it is kind of unfair to 
say that Iran shouldn't have missiles if everybody else has them.
  He literally said this on TV today.
  For the last 100 days, Donald Trump and the administration have been 
telling us that the American people have to sacrifice and go to war and 
spend billions of dollars and have 13 Americans killed and suffer 
through $6-a-gallon gas prices because we have to stop Iran from having 
missiles. The Presiding Officer and I have sat in briefings in which we 
have been told that the point of this war is to destroy Iran's missile 
capacity, and now the President is saying: Eh, it just doesn't matter.
  President Trump's goals shifted, but they seemed to be to get a 
regime that was more friendly to the United States and to Israel. We 
have a harder-line regime now in charge of the country than we did 
before. We had a doddering, 80-year-old Ayatollah. We now have a, 
frankly, much more capable and much more provocative hard-line regime.
  He said he wanted to get rid of the drone program. The drone program 
is still there. There is nothing in this agreement about their drone 
program. He wanted to get rid of their missile program. There is 
nothing in this agreement about their missile program.
  He wanted to get rid of their nuclear program, and he pledged that he 
would carry out this war in a way that got a better deal than President 
Obama did. Of course, he had to promise that because he pulled out of 
the JCPOA. He got none of it in this agreement. He got none of it in 
this agreement. Yes, in this agreement, there is a suggestion that 
there is now going to be a negotiation between the United States and 
Iran over their nuclear program, but that negotiation was available 
before this war began.
  The President may argue that this war has given him additional 
leverage. That is nonsensical. There is fundamentally less leverage 
today than there was before the war began. Let's just go through it for 
a second.
  When Obama was negotiating the nuclear deal, he had the oil sanctions 
in place. Those are the most serious sanctions, right? Iran runs on oil 
revenue, so the primary leverage Obama had during those negotiations 
was the oil sanctions. We are releasing all of the oil sanctions before 
the nuclear negotiations happen. That is malpractice. Overnight, 
immediately, the leverage available for nuclear negotiations 
essentially goes up in smoke.
  We are also giving them billions of dollars in frozen funds.
  In the earlier negotiations, President Obama had Russia and China on 
our side. Donald Trump has mishandled foreign relations such that now 
China and Russia are on the Iranians' side. It is fundamentally 
different leverage.
  Maybe most importantly, President Obama had the threat of military 
action. If you don't get a deal, we can always take military action. 
Well, that leverage is gone as well because Iran took our best shot and 
not only survived but got the United States to sign an agreement where 
we are paying them billions of dollars in order to end the war, 
including a suggestion that we are going to create a $300 billion 
reparations fund. Guess what. If you have studied history, you know 
that the winning side doesn't pay reparations. The losers pay 
reparations.
  So the Iranians don't have to worry about oil sanctions. They are 
gone. The Iranians don't have to worry about getting back their frozen 
funds. We are transferring them. They don't have to worry about an 
American military response because they have already seen it, and they 
have survived. And they don't need to worry about going up against the 
United States, China, and Russia because China and Russia are now on 
their side.
  These nuclear negotiations are just destined to fail. I hope I am 
wrong, but on the backside of this war, the President has almost no 
leverage. What is left? This agreement drops the oil sanctions. It 
frees up the frozen funds. He has already played the military card.
  There is a suggestion in this document that there is going to be a 
specific negotiation about the enriched uranium that Iran holds. Now, 
remember when Obama was negotiating with Iran, they had 15-percent 
enriched uranium. They weren't close to the enrichment capacity to make 
a bomb. Today, they have a 60-percent enrichment capacity. Because 
Donald Trump pulled out of the agreement, Iran now has 60 percent. 
Everybody knows that, to get from 60 to the quality you need to produce 
a bomb, it takes a matter of days.
  Iran says in this agreement that they will talk about the enriched 
uranium, but they are willing to talk about the enriched uranium being 
degraded to 3 percent, which is the number in the JCPOA. So they 
basically signal in this agreement that, yeah, we will talk about 
getting rid of our enriched uranium or diluting it, but we are just 
going to talk about the same thing that we were talking to the Obama 
administration about.
  All of this was predictable. All of this was predictable. I have 
listened to my hard-line colleagues argue that the only way to stop 
Iran from getting a nuclear weapon or to destroy their missiles or to 
stop their support for terrorism is to go to war with Iran. Well, we 
went to war with Iran for 100 days, and on the backside of it, they 
still have their nuclear program, they still have their missiles, they 
still have their drones, they are still supporting terrorism. It didn't 
work, and most of us knew it wasn't going to work. Most of us said 
that, if you go to war with Iran, we will end up in a worse position, 
and here we are in a fundamentally worse position.
  The entire scope of this agreement basically boils down to a 
multibillion-dollar payment to Iran so that Iran opens the Strait of 
Hormuz. What a disaster that is. To add insult to injury, the text says 
that Iran promises to open the strait--for 10 years? No. For 5 years? 
For a year? No.
  Iran says: We will open the Strait of Hormuz for 2 months toll free. 
Then, after that period of time, we will consult with the Government of 
Oman on the tolling structure.
  So open for 60 days and then Oman and Iran will talk about the new 
structure.
  I knew it was going to be a humiliating agreement. I didn't know it 
was going to be this humiliating. I want the war to end, and I am 
willing to stomach a bad deal, but this agreement exposes what a 
colossal mistake it was--the biggest foreign policy blunder of 20 
years--to start this war and why every hawk who cheerled us into war 
with Iran was wrong. We didn't get anything that you thought we were 
going to get out of this.
  I am hopeful that I am wrong about these negotiations. I am hopeful 
that new leverage will materialize, but I don't see any leverage at 
all. It is given up in this agreement. It is given up in the way that 
this war has been perpetuated. I am glad the war is over, but I am 
furious that it has resulted in our Nation's humiliation and in Iran's 
becoming stronger and in America's becoming weaker, and everybody--
Republicans and Democrats--should be furious about that.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Justice). The Senator from Ohio.

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