[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 16789-16792]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1420
                   THE THREAT OF A NUCLEAR ARMED IRAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. ANDREWS. Madam Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity, and I 
would like to thank the members of the House staff that are staying 
beyond voting hours for our opportunity to speak, and I promise that I 
will reward your efforts with brevity.
  This is the end of another difficult week for a lot of Americans. For 
too many Americans, it's another week

[[Page 16790]]

without a paycheck. For many Americans, this is the week their 
unemployment benefits will expire and they will have no income next 
week. For many Americans, this is the last weekend they'll be in their 
home because the foreclosure is about to be executed upon. And sadly, 
for many Americans, this might be the last time that he or she closes 
the doors on their business. This time they close it for good.
  Our constituents and neighbors are hurting, hurting desperately, and 
I think there has been far too little attention paid to those problems 
here in this institution. I hope that when we return after what is, 
parenthetically, our 12th recess of the year, we will get to work on 
the jobs problem for our country and try to put our people back to 
work.
  As vital as that jobs crisis is, we can never put our country in a 
situation where we are not paying attention to threats to our security 
here at home and around the world. And I do want to spend a few moments 
this afternoon talking about what I think is a very significant threat, 
and that is the threat of Iran developing a nuclear weapon.
  It is to the credit of the chairwoman of the international relations 
committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, and the 
senior Democrat ranking member, Mr. Berman, that yesterday Republicans 
and Democrats on that committee came together to pass what I consider 
to be very powerful legislation that would work against the propagation 
of nuclear weapons by Iran. I hope that legislation is something that 
will be brought to the floor promptly and supported by Members from 
both sides. I think it is important to understand what more we could do 
and why it's so important to do it.
  This is another productive day throughout our country. People are 
going to work in our cities and in our small towns and our suburbs. 
They are going to classes at universities and schools. They are 
visiting their loved ones in hospitals. It is, thank God, a normal day 
in America where we can do the things that we want to do. But, you 
know, a day 10 years ago in September of 2001 started like a normal 
day, too. September 11, 2001, was a beautiful, blue sky, crystalline 
day, and it ended as one of the worst days in the history of our 
country. The pain of that day is felt by people around this country not 
just in the New York metropolitan region, not just in Washington, D.C., 
not just in Pennsylvania, but around the country and around the world.
  I fear and dread that a similar day could come from a scenario almost 
too terrible to imagine. Imagine a group of terrorists who are able to 
assemble a substantial amount of money but not an impossible amount of 
money--let's say about $2 million--and they're able to commandeer the 
services of scientists who are evil enough or hungry enough that they 
would lend their skills to the destructive task of making a small 
nuclear device, what we call a small improvised explosive device, a 
nuclear IED. And they don't need a missile to deliver this nuclear IED; 
they need a U-Haul truck. So they assemble the IED and they load it on 
the back of a U-Haul truck, and they drive it to a place where there's 
a lot of innocent Americans: The National Mall right outside of this 
building, a sports arena for an NFL football game, Times Square, or a 
church or a synagogue or a mosque where people are about to worship. 
And they detonate the IED. The consequences are huge numbers of deaths 
in the immediate area of the explosion, a significant number of people 
sickened and eventually dying from nuclear poisoning, the contamination 
of the area of the explosion, and a devastating blow to the psyche of 
the United States of America.
  How could this happen? Is this possible?
  Well, it's possible only if terrorists get access to what's called 
fissile material from which you can make a nuclear bomb. Fissile 
material can only come from three places: You can make it, and it takes 
a very significant industrial complex to do so; you can steal it, and 
that's a problem that we're working on trying to prevent; or you can 
have a government that gives it to you because that government is 
committed to a terrorist agenda.
  My colleagues, understand that the risk of Iranian nuclear 
proliferation includes firing a missile at U.S. troops or U.S. allies 
in the Middle East. It most certainly includes that risk, but it's not 
limited to that risk. I think the greatest risk of Iranian nuclear 
proliferation is the risk of fissile material being handed off by the 
Iranian Government to a terrorist organization that then assembles a 
small nuclear IED and brings havoc and death to innocent people in the 
United States of America. How do we stop that? How do we prevent that 
from happening? That was the focus of the effort of the Foreign Affairs 
Committee yesterday, and I think it should be the focus of our country 
and civilized countries around the world.
  Now, it's important to understand the history of this problem, the 
context of this problem, the risk of this problem, and what I believe 
is the solution to this problem. The history is this:
  Of all the Nations in the world, only one has conducted a nuclear 
weapons research program and systematically lied about the fact that it 
has done so, and that one nation is the Republic of Iran. The source, 
it's a document from the IAEA, the international agency that monitors 
nuclear development, from September 24, 2005, when that organization 
said that they were uncertain of Iran's motives in failing to make 
important declarations over an extended period of time and in pursuing 
a policy of concealment until October of 2003. This is not a political 
view of an American legislator or an ideological position of a journal. 
This is the official statement from the international agency that 
watches nuclear weapons. That's the history. A long history of deceit 
and concealment.
  What's the context? How is Iran behaving in the present state of 
world affairs? First of all, they are killing United States troops in 
Iraq. Here's what the State Department's 2010 country terrorism report 
had to say about Iran:
  Despite its pledge to support the stabilization of Iraq, Iranian 
authorities continue to provide lethal support, including weapons, 
training, funding, and guidance to Iraqi Shia militant groups that 
target U.S. and Iraqi forces.
  This is a country that is actively engaged in an attempt to kill 
American soldiers in Iraq as we speak today.
  Secondly, their brutality extends to their own people systematically. 
Let me highlight just one chilling and horrifying example reported by 
Amnesty International on October 11, 2011. An actress named Marzieh 
Vafamehr has become the latest individual to face a sentence of 
flogging--flogging. She was sentenced on or about October 8, 2011, to a 
year in prison and 90 lashes.

                              {time}  1430

  This is not the Middle Ages. I'm not reading from a historic treatise 
from the year 800. I'm reading from a sentence passed down by an 
Iranian court less than a month ago. What was her offense? Her offense 
was she appeared in a film called ``My Tehran for Sale'' in which she 
appeared in one scene without the mandatory head covering which women 
in Iran are required to wear and appears to drink alcohol in another. 
Her husband denied that she had consumed any alcohol, but the exact 
charge was levied, and this woman is in prison as we speak and once a 
month is beaten because she appeared in a movie in a way that was 
culturally offensive to the regime. This is the regime that is seeking 
a nuclear weapon.
  What else in the context, what else are they up to? Well, let's 
listen to the statements of the President of Iran. Now he's not the 
person that really runs the country; the so-called Revolutionary 
Council does. But he's involved in its government, President 
Ahmadinejad, and here is what he said:
  ``Thanks to people's wishes and God's will, the trend for the 
existence of the Zionist regime is downwards, and this is what God has 
promised and what all nations want. Just as the Soviet Union was wiped 
out and today does not exist,

[[Page 16791]]

so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out.'' This is the regime that 
is attempting to acquire a nuclear weapon.
  And, finally, we were all, I think, stunned by the reports last week 
that individuals who allegedly had ties to the Iranian Government were 
indicted in the American court system for allegedly plotting the 
assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States on 
U.S. soil. Now, Madam Speaker, I would hasten to point out, as you well 
know, in our system these are allegations, not facts, and so we cannot 
say that these things are true. But I can scarcely think of a time in 
the history of our country where we have indicted foreign nationals or 
U.S. citizens for an alleged conspiracy to murder a foreign diplomat on 
our soil. Perhaps these individuals will be found not guilty. Perhaps 
they will be found guilty. But the fact that there was probable cause 
to make such an assertion is deeply shocking and disconcerting. This is 
the regime that is attempting to achieve a nuclear weapon.
  Now how close are they? Here's a report from May 24 of 2011. The 
world's global nuclear inspection agency, the IAEA, frustrated by 
Iran's refusal to answer questions, revealed for the first time on 
Tuesday that it, meaning the U.N. agency that watches nuclear weapons, 
it possesses evidence that Tehran has conducted work on a highly 
sophisticated nuclear triggering technology that experts said could be 
used for only one purpose: setting off a nuclear weapon. This is the 
regime that says it is trying to acquire centrifuges and nuclear power 
plants to create nuclear power for its people. But the quote that I 
just read is from the international agency, not from U.S. intelligence, 
not from our allies, not from those who oppose the Iranian regime, but 
from the neutral international agency, which, frankly, has criticized 
the United States on occasion, from the neutral international agency 
talking about what the Iranians are up to.
  Now it's classified information as to how close they are to receiving 
this, and we are all under an oath not to talk about that classified 
information, but the public record is replete with information that the 
Iranians are aggressively pursuing such a weapon.
  And here's an academic analysis that talks about how such a weapon 
could be used by a terrorist group that would be the beneficiary of an 
Iranian handoff of fissile material. Based upon this professor's 
analysis, and this is written by the executive director for the Project 
on Managing the Atom, Jeffrey Lewis from the John F. Kennedy School of 
Government at Harvard University, the article is called the ``Economics 
of Nuclear Terrorism.'' Here is what Professor Lewis has to say: A 
terrorist organization like al Qaeda could plausibly build and deliver 
a nuclear weapon for less than $2 million. Two million dollars. Now, of 
course, that's $2 million after you've received the fissile material or 
bought it. Well, such an organization would now have a willing partner 
in Tehran that would own and be able to produce such fissile material.
  We have an urgent economic crisis in our country. We need to fix it. 
We have a lot of other problems we need to fix. But this is happening. 
And we cannot let our attention to our economic crisis take our 
attention away from our duty to prevent this kind of catastrophe from 
happening to innocent people in the world.
  So what do we do about it? What's the solution? How do we go forward 
in a way that stops the Iranians from getting this fissile material? To 
the credit of this Congress, both parties, and President Obama, the 
United States imposed bilateral sanctions on the Iranians about a year 
and a half ago. And to the credit of the United Nations Security 
Council, the United Nations Security Council imposed modest sanctions 
on the Iranians about a year ago, and there is some evidence that these 
sanctions are beginning to work.
  The United States sanctions, which were led by then-ranking member 
Ros-Lehtinen and now chairwoman, and by then-Chairman Berman, now 
ranking member, and frankly that relied upon the work of Senator Kirk 
in the Senate, focused on a gasoline embargo. It's an odd fact, but 
Iran, which is a country which exports crude oil, imports about 40 
percent of its gasoline because its economy is so dysfunctional that it 
cannot refine its own products. Before the U.S. sanctions were imposed, 
the price of a gallon of gasoline heavily subsidized in Iran was 38 
cents a gallon. Today it's $1.58 a gallon.
  Now what does this mean? It means that an Iranian citizen who used to 
have to work 1 hour to fill their gas tank once a week now has to work 
5 hours to fill their gas tank once a week. This is not a huge 
sacrifice, but it's making a dent in the economy of Iran.
  It is our intention, obviously, not to in any way punish or 
jeopardize the well-being of the Iranian people. They are our friends, 
and we want them to be our friends and allies for years to come. But 
the simple, and I think compelling, logic of these sanctions is we are 
compelling the Iranian leadership to choose between pursuing their 
nuclear weapons ambitions but suffering economic consequences or 
abandoning those nuclear weapons ambitions and having the opportunity 
to restore their economy to some basic degree of health.
  By the way, at a time when crude oil prices were rising, the Iranian 
economy stagnated. They had a negative growth of 1 percent last year, 
and they had stagnant growth the year before that. So at a time when 
they should have been enjoying robust economic growth because of rising 
crude oil prices, they were stagnant because of the effectiveness of 
these sanctions.
  Perhaps the best evidence of effectiveness was from President 
Ahmadinejad himself, who this week stood before their parliament 
defending a cabinet member of his who is accused of some wrongdoing and 
said that one of the reasons why they had to engage in the wrongdoing 
was their economy was in bad shape because ``we can't do international 
banking transactions anymore.'' Well, there's some good news.
  What I'm suggesting here is that the House should move rapidly to 
embrace and support the legislation that the Foreign Relations 
Committee marked up yesterday. And I think that legislation will enjoy 
broad Republican and Democratic support, as it did yesterday. I believe 
it was approved unanimously by the committee. I would then urge our 
administration to work with the Congress and sign such legislation and 
implement it.
  Now, listen, Madam Speaker, I fully understand that sanctions alone 
may not be sufficient. And I'm not here today to argue for that 
proposition. What I am here today to argue for is the proposition that 
the sanctions we have imposed thus far have shown some signs of 
success. I think this is the time to intensify those sanctions, not to 
weaken them. I think this is a time for us to intensify our unified 
national resolve on this question. And despite our very profound 
differences on matters of economics and social policy, which is what a 
democracy ought to have, there should be no difference between us on 
the question of standing in a unified fashion in favor of more intense 
sanctions against Iran. The need is urgent and compelling.

                              {time}  1440

  You know, Madam Speaker, if someone had stood in this Chamber in the 
mid-1990s and said, If we don't focus our intelligence efforts on an 
obscure group of former mujahedin rebels in Afghanistan called al 
Qaeda, if we don't do that, the day may come when we will have a 
domestic Pearl Harbor, when the World Trade Centers will collapse, when 
thousands of people will perish, when the Pentagon, our own air space, 
will be attacked by civilians in our country, I think one would have 
thought that the Member was auditioning for a Tom Clancy film. It would 
sound very fantastic, very unlikely, and almost like science fiction or 
a spy thriller.
  I wish September 11, 2001, had been fiction--I wish. That we had not 
had to go to those funerals and comfort those families who suffer 
today, I wish that were the fact. And there will be some

[[Page 16792]]

who will say that the scenario we talked about earlier, about a nuclear 
IED exploding in Times Square or the National Mall or an NFL football 
game, is too provocative or too sensational or too scary. I hope 
they're absolutely right; I hope it's total fiction.
  But I think we ought to know better. I think we ought to know better 
that there is a regime which has demonstrated its deceit, which has 
manifested its evil toward its own people and to our troops in the 
Middle East, that has used language that is more than just purple 
language, that is language that goes beyond the pale about the 
annihilation of Israel and of all those who would stand with Israel, 
and that now stands accused--or persons alleged to have been tied to 
that regime now stand accused in our courts of participating in a 
conspiracy to assassinate a foreign diplomat on our soil. These are 
people we should be concerned about.
  And as we look at the question of whether such an attack could 
happen, I think the question is unequivocally: Yes, it can. Our 
responsibility is to, with equal equivocation, say, no, it won't, no, 
it won't; that we will use the resources at our disposal--our 
international alliances, our economic leverage, our diplomatic skill--
to try to move the Iranians to the point where they would accept a 
reasonable deal which says if you want to have nuclear power plants in 
your country, that's your sovereign right; but you must buy your fuel 
from outside the country and you must abandon your ability to 
manufacture and synthesize fuel. That's a reasonable and fair 
settlement. We should use every tool at our disposal to encourage the 
Iranian Government to accept such a settlement.
  And as any wise President should do, as President Obama has done, as 
President Bush did before him, as President Clinton did before him, as 
President Bush did before him, as Presidents Reagan and Carter did 
before them, any prudent American President must reserve the right to 
defend our sovereign interests with whatever tools are necessary should 
the need arise. I pray that the need will never arise. And I think if 
we act intelligently, forcefully, but urgently, I think that we can 
avoid that day and avoid a situation like I described earlier.
  So, Madam Speaker, thank you for this time this afternoon. I'd like 
to again thank the staff for its indulgence. I commend the chairwoman 
of our committee and the ranking member. And I look forward to 
supporting their legislation, broadening our unified, bipartisan 
national effort to stand strong against the tyranny and evil of this 
regime and for the welfare of innocent people throughout the world and 
throughout our country.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________