[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 4994-4995]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      NUCLEAR AGREEMENT WITH IRAN

  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, yesterday, the Senate Foreign Relations 
Committee reported the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015. To 
the surprise of many people, including me, it was unanimously reported, 
which makes me begin to wonder just how much Iran nuclear agreement 
review there will be in this act.
  I was an original cosponsor of the Corker-Menendez bill that would 
give Congress and the American people a voice in what is likely to be 
the most significant nuclear arms agreement in this decade. I think the 
likelihood, as we move toward the agreement, as it appears to be 
structured, is that it won't be able to contain the desire of other 
people in the neighborhood--and maybe in other places in the world but 
certainly in the neighborhood--to be just as capable of producing a 
nuclear weapon as we allow Iran to be.
  Supporting this bill does mean that Congress really gives the 
opportunity for these negotiations to advance, not Congress putting the 
brakes on these negotiations. Specifically, the bill would give 
Congress the opportunity to review and weigh in on a deal that has 
already been made. It does appear to prohibit the administration from 
removing sanctions while Congress reviews and while Congress votes on a 
final deal, if that is what Congress decides to do. It doesn't require 
Congress to vote, as I read it, but I look forward to having the people 
who unanimously voted for this in the Foreign Relations Committee 
explain how it really does involve the Congress as the Constitution 
would suggest the Senate would be involved. This does permit removal of 
sanctions only if the Congress passes a joint resolution approving the 
agreement, I have been told.
  The new bill reported out of committee makes the following changes in 
the original bill. Under the new bill, the congressional review period 
isn't going to be 60 days, it would be 30 days. The new bill removes 
the provision requiring the administration to certify to Congress that 
Iran is not providing material support to terrorists plotting against 
the homeland or against U.S. entities.
  We are continuing to be told: Well, that is a different topic. I 
don't know why that is a different topic at all. A nuclear-capable Iran 
that is supporting terrorism is obviously more dangerous than a 
nuclear-capable Iran that is not supporting terrorism. The weapon that 
you can see being built, the weapon that would compare to weapons we 
may have built, and other powers, in the past was perhaps not nearly as 
dangerous as the weapon being built that could be used by some 
terrorist.
  This bill does appear to give Congress the ability to intervene but 
only to intervene after the parties have made the deal. I am not 
particularly offended by that. If this were a real treaty, the 
administration would obviously be negotiating that treaty and then 
would bring the treaty to the Senate for approval, as the Constitution 
requires and as has happened over and over again on treaties involving 
nuclear capacity, nuclear ability, nuclear buildup, or nuclear build-
down. That is not a new thing for the Senate to deal with, but 
apparently nobody in the administration wants this to be this kind of 
treaty. Now, there is, apparently, a way to weigh in before it is 
implemented but in a way that I think we are going to have to look at 
very carefully if and when that legislation comes to the floor.

[[Page 4995]]

  A nuclear-armed Iran, an Iran that is nuclear weapons capable--
whether that is in 6 months or 12 months or monitored or unmonitored--
is a major threat, in my view, to the United States. It is a major 
threat to our allies in the region. Lifting these sanctions only 
empowers Iran to have more influence in the region. The sanctions did 
bring Iran to the negotiating table, but they have been given a lot of 
breathing room since these negotiations started a couple of years ago. 
We wouldn't be negotiating, I don't think, if the sanctions hadn't been 
working.
  With what has happened to oil prices, those sanctions would have had 
a more dramatic effect on the economy of a country in which we have 
every reason to believe the population is inclined to be very friendly 
toward the United States. They are educated, they are capable, and they 
have long-term ties with many of their family members in this country. 
But, of course, the population is not in control of the country; the 
country is controlled by a small group who has only one view of how the 
world can work, and, frankly, that small group appears to have only one 
view of what they think about the United States of America. If you 
listen to the comments the Supreme Leader, the religious leader, makes 
over and over again, that view is dependably negative about our country 
and our people and our system of government and our ability to live 
side by side with each other. So we should be concerned about that.
  The agreement would allow them to continue to enrich uranium. It 
would allow them to retain centrifuges, which we said, by the way, we 
wouldn't do. That was a point we wouldn't negotiate away. It would 
allow them to continue to have thousands of centrifuges--something we 
also said we wouldn't allow them to do. It would allow them to continue 
developing new and better and more sophisticated ways to enrich 
uranium, to weaponize, to have the ability to create a weapon.
  Frankly, it is not even clear what agreement has been agreed to. To 
listen to our description of the agreement is a very different 
description of the framework. There is no agreement, everybody agrees 
to that, but there is supposedly a framework.
  This framework would build two very different houses. If we listen to 
their description of the agreement and we listen to our description of 
the agreement, we are looking at very different things.
  This week, for example, the Supreme Leader saw this very differently 
than the President--the so-called deal--with respect to when the 
sanctions would be removed and what would be happening.
  President Obama and Secretary Kerry have put a tremendous amount of 
effort into reaching an agreement--in fact, such amount of effort that 
it has been clear from the very start of the negotiations who wanted an 
agreement the most. What hasn't been clear and what isn't clear to me 
is why we are so eager to just check the box and move on here, and 
assume that sometime in the next few years Iran will become a 
friendlier state and will not want to head in a bad direction. Not only 
does it head Iran in a nuclear-weapons direction, but it heads many 
other people in the neighborhood in the direction of wondering if they 
have this capacity, why wouldn't we want to have this capacity?
  Most Americans don't believe Iran will stick to a deal. Frankly, I 
have great questions about that myself.
  Whether the President likes it or not, this is an international 
agreement with wide-ranging consequences. The Congress and the American 
people have a role to play here. The Foreign Relations Committee has 
made a proposal about what that role should be. But it seems to me that 
proposal is still a long way away from the constitutional protection 
that should be involved when we reach an agreement of this kind, or 
when we negotiate a treaty.
  A number of us sent a letter a few weeks ago which got a lot of 
attention. I thought the reaction to that letter was pretty 
interesting.
  The immediate reaction from the Secretary of State was: Well, this 
isn't a treaty, it is just an agreement. The Senate doesn't have to 
approve an agreement. The President would be bound by it, and it would 
be such a good agreement--according to the Secretary of State--that the 
next President would want to be bound by it as well.
  This is a pretty significant moment to decide that we may or may not 
be bound by what is decided.
  The Iranian Foreign Minister then was able to give us some sense of 
his understanding. I think the phrase he said the next day was: We know 
international law is what really matters here, not the law of any given 
country.
  I have been all over my State, as many of us have, in the last couple 
of weeks. I don't think there is any courthouse, any coffee shop, or 
any gathering of people in Missouri where they would say: Well, really, 
international law is what we care about. We don't care about what the 
Constitution says when we are dealing with other countries.
  Then 72 hours after that letter was sent, the President's Chief of 
Staff said: Really, the President would probably want to take this to 
the U.N., but he probably wouldn't want to take it to the U.S. Senate.
  We will see how this debate goes on the proposal that the Foreign 
Affairs Committee is making, but it clearly does not bode in the 
direction of a treaty approved by two-thirds of the Members of the U.S. 
Senate. In my view, we are still a long way from a final agreement.
  There seems to be a lot of disagreement as to what the framework 
means. But as we move toward that final agreement, our number one 
priority should be to do everything possible to prohibit Iran--whose 
influence in the world and the region is already disproportionate--from 
having the capacity to ever have a nuclear weapon. I hope our 
negotiators continue to keep that in mind, and I hope there is not 
nearly as much disagreement about the final agreement as there is about 
what the framework itself says.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.

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