[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12003-12004]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in 
the Record an editorial from the July 21 edition of the Washington 
Post. I completely agree with this editorial.
  The metric is not how many long overdue individual sanctions are 
made. We must instead be focused on our goal: preventing the 
acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability by the Islamic Republic of 
Iran.
  I fear we are spiraling at an accelerating speed to the point when we 
have but one option left to stop the Islamic Republic of Iran's illegal 
nuclear weapons ambitions. If that happens, history will judge that we 
were put into this position by our own failure to avail ourselves of 
other options while we still had them.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, July 21, 2011]

            Sanctions Aren't Slowing Iran's Nuclear Progress

       According to a recent story in The Post, the Obama 
     administration is ``quietly toasting'' the success of 
     international sanctions against Iran. The Islamic republic is 
     having increasing difficulty arranging imports, including 
     food, and the central bank is reportedly short of hard 
     currency. Billions of dollars in foreign investment projects 
     have been canceled, and few banks, insurance companies or 
     shipping firms are willing to do business with Tehran.
       There are also signs of political stress. President Mahmoud 
     Ahmadinejad is bitterly at odds with conservative clergy and 
     a majority of parliament and appears to have lost the support 
     of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran's closest 
     ally, the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, is slowly but 
     steadily losing ground to a popular uprising, raising the 
     prospect that Iran's once-firm foothold in the Arab Middle 
     East will be reduced to an isolated Hezbollah militia in 
     Lebanon.
       We don't begrudge the White House a toast or two over these 
     developments; the administration has worked hard and 
     relatively effectively to make the sanctions work. But it's 
     important to note a stubborn reality: There has been no 
     change in Iran's drive for nuclear weapons or in its 
     aggressive efforts to drive the United States out of the 
     Middle East.
       If anything, Tehran has recently grown bolder. Last month 
     it announced plans to triple its capacity to produce uranium 
     enriched to the level of 20 percent--a far higher

[[Page 12004]]

     degree of processing than is needed to produce nuclear 
     energy. Western diplomats and experts say that Iran is 
     preparing, and may have already begun, to install a new 
     generation of powerful centrifuges in a plant built into a 
     mountain near the city of Qom. As British Foreign Secretary 
     William Hague wrote in an op-ed published by the Guardian 
     last week, it would take only two to three months to convert 
     uranium enriched at Qom into weapons-grade material. That 
     means that Iran could have a ``breakout'' capacity allowing 
     it to quickly produce a weapon when it chose to do so.
       Mr. Hague told the British Parliament last month that Iran 
     also has been secretly testing medium-range missiles capable 
     of carrying a nuclear warhead. Britain believes there have 
     been three such tests since October. Meanwhile, Iranian-
     backed militias have launched a new offensive against U.S. 
     forces in Iraq. According to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta 
     and other senior officials, Tehran has supplied sophisticated 
     rockets and roadside bombs for attacks on U.S. troops, 15 of 
     whom were killed during June.
       Iran's ability to sustain its nuclear program and its 
     meddling in Iraq reflect the fact that these initiatives are 
     controlled by the Revolutionary Guard, which has not been 
     affected by the political feuding in Tehran and has first 
     claim on the oil revenue that Iran continues to reap. 
     Economic and political hardship also has had no apparent 
     impact on Mr. Khamenei, who has maintained the regime's 
     refusal even to negotiate with the U.N. Security Council, 
     much less obey its resolutions.
       The bottom line is that the threat from Iran is not 
     diminishing but growing. Where is the policy to reverse that 
     alarming trend?

                          ____________________