[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 13387-13388]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      NUCLEAR AGREEMENT WITH IRAN

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, on another matter, the purpose of the 
Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act is to ensure Congress has a fully 
informed understanding of any comprehensive agreement reached between 
the administration and Iran. These are principles both parties endorsed 
when they voted overwhelmingly to pass that measure earlier this year. 
These are principles President Obama endorsed when he signed it into 
law. These are principles that need to be upheld.
  That is why I recently joined Speaker Boehner, Senator Cotton, and 
Congressman Pompeo in calling on the administration to comply with the 
terms of this law by providing the Senate with the text of the two side 
agreements reached between Iran and the IAEA. That was more than a week 
ago, but we still have yet to receive it. Without this critical 
information, Republicans and Democrats in Congress may not be able to 
properly assess such a highly consequential deal with Iran. That is 
simply not acceptable. The administration needs to turn over the side 
agreements without delay. Let me say that again. The administration 
needs to turn over the side agreements without delay.
  Even considering all this, the Senate has already begun its necessary 
oversight of the deal that will soon be before us. The Armed Services 
Committee held a hearing yesterday on the strategic and military 
implications of the deal. The Foreign Relations Committee also held a 
hearing yesterday to consider the alternatives to this agreement.

[[Page 13388]]

  Today it will consider the implications of sanctions relief for Iran, 
along with Congress's ability to impose additional sanctions if Tehran 
persists in its support of terrorism. The Intelligence Committee has 
already embarked on a series of briefings and hearings that will help 
Congress determine whether the deal can even be verified.
  As the review moves forward, we will continue working to assess the 
relative threat posed to the Greater Middle East and to the United 
States by an Iranian regime empowered with a threshold nuclear program 
and billions of dollars of additional resources. I know this worries a 
lot of Members in both parties.
  Consider what the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee 
said just this week:

       I'm troubled that what this essentially does is after 
     fifteen years it legitimizes Iran as a nuclear threshold 
     state. After fifteen years Iran can produce weapons-grade 
     highly-enriched uranium without limitations and that is 
     disturbing because what that means to me is it really doesn't 
     prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. It just postpones 
     it.

  That is the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He 
is not the only Democrat or Republican with these types of concerns. We 
will keep working for answers.
  We will also keep pressing for a more fulsome revelation of the true 
extent of the possible military dimensions of Iran's nuclear program.
  Understanding Iran's relative trustworthiness in the past will be 
critical to determining Iran's potential for trustworthiness in the 
future--whether, for instance, it can truly be trusted to live up to 
its commitments in today's agreement. Getting a fuller picture of 
Iran's past nuclear activities and research will also be important to 
ensuring the U.N. Security Council, which rushed to approve the 
comprehensive deal, has a more comprehensive understanding moving 
forward.
  We will continue working hard to assess this agreement on behalf of 
the American people who absolutely deserve a say in a deal of this 
magnitude. At the end, Congress will take a vote and answer a simple 
but powerful question: Will this agreement actually make America and 
its allies safer?

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