[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15640-15641]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       IRAN NUCLEAR NEGOTIATIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Speaker, we are now just 11 days away from the 
November 24 deadline for the Iran nuclear negotiations.
  President Obama and the P5+1 have fallen for Rouhani's stall tactics, 
despite having every reason to suspect that Iran was never serious 
about a deal, and that is precisely why it is imperative that Congress 
use the mechanisms at our disposal to prevent the administration from 
making any nuclear agreement with Iran that seeks to go against our 
national security interests.
  The administration and the P5+1 started with a weak hand, and that 
has only gotten weaker. That is precisely why the Iranian regime feels 
emboldened to make proclamations that it will never agree to stop its 
enrichment and why it insists that it has a right to enrich and that it 
must be part of the final agreement.
  In just the past few days, the IAEA, the U.N. agency that is tasked 
with monitoring Iran's nuclear program and ensuring its compliance with 
the joint plan of action, has said that Iran refuses to answer 
questions about its nuclear program and that it is impeding

[[Page 15641]]

its investigation into the possible military dimensions of the program. 
This is amazing.
  A former IAEA chief inspector said recently that he believes that 
Iran lied about the number of advanced centrifuges that it possesses. 
Iran itself has confirmed that it has tested a new centrifuge that 
could speed up its enrichment process even further; yet the 
administration is so desperate to get us to a ``yes'' that it will 
overlook these very serious and dangerous transgressions.
  The President has also failed to include in the negotiations Tehran's 
ballistic missile program, its support for terror worldwide, and its 
abysmal human rights record. The Supreme Leader right now is calling to 
arm Gaza and the West Bank to fight against Israel, and it calls for 
the democratic Jewish state to be eliminated.
  Had the administration come to Congress before it mistakenly entered 
into these discussions and asked us what we needed to see for an 
acceptable deal, we would have said keep the sanctions against the 
Iranian regime. Keep the sanctions, and threaten to even expand them.
  We would have kept the only leverage we had against the regime until 
it agreed to abandon its enrichment and other illicit activities, but 
the President opted to not do that and, instead, mistakenly eased the 
sanctions, injecting money into the Iranian economy and giving away our 
leverage, and he still doesn't look to us for any input.
  Mr. Speaker, the administration's idea of consultation is a one-way 
street. It comes to brief us and our staff on the Iran nuclear deal, 
but it isn't interested in hearing our input and having that reflected 
in its approach to the negotiations with Iran.
  Mr. Speaker, Congress must not allow this administration to continue 
to circumvent us and ignore our concerns about this weak negotiating 
position. We have been saying from day one that this approach was a 
mistake and that the joint plan of action was a signal that the 
administration has conceded on the enrichment aspect of the Iran 
nuclear program.
  Iran has already emerged as the clear winner in this whole charade, 
and the P5+1 nations, especially the United States, look more foolish, 
more pathetic, and weaker than we did when the North Korean regime 
implemented the same tactics.
  If the President continues to ignore our warnings on signing a 
nuclear deal that we believe goes against U.S. national security 
interests, then it is incumbent upon us in Congress to take firm 
action.
  Simply put, we must take action and get serious about preventing Iran 
from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and that means ensuring that Iran 
cannot enrich any uranium at all and that it must dismantle its nuclear 
infrastructure.
  We must start right now by sending an unambiguous message to the 
administration that we will not accept any deal that leaves Iran with 
even the slightest capability of producing a nuclear weapon.

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