[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10606-10607]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      AN AGREEMENT WITH IRAN MUST BAR ITS PATH TO NUCLEAR WEAPONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from New Jersey 
(Mr. Smith) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, the deadline is bearing down on 
us for the President's nuclear agreement with Iran. So, at this moment, 
Congress must send the administration a strong message: In order to be 
acceptable, any agreement must bar every Iranian path to nuclear 
weapons.
  This means the deal must last for decades. There has been a lot of 
reporting of stopgap deals that would try to restrict Iran in the short 
term while giving it a blank check after just some 10 years. Such an 
agreement would be absurd, Mr. Speaker. Given Iran's longstanding 
nefarious quest for nuclear weapons and its government's genocidal 
anti-Semitism, I and the vast majority of my colleagues in Congress 
would never accept such a bad deal.
  Iran will also have to dismantle its current nuclear infrastructure 
and turn over nearly all of its stockpile of uranium. Iran prefers to 
merely ``disconnect'' its 19,000 centrifuges. That is totally 
unacceptable--coming from the Iranian Government with its murderous 
threats to annihilate the State of Israel and its obsessive hatred of 
Jews worldwide. It is estimated that centrifuges could be reconnected 
in a matter of mere months--and so they must be dismantled, and the 
core should be removed from the Arak heavy water reactor.
  It also means there can be no lifting or a reduction of sanctions 
until the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, certifies that 
Iran has complied with its commitments under the agreement; and IAEA 
inspectors must be granted access to any and all suspected sites. This 
access must be unimpeded, Mr. Speaker, meaning that the IAEA must be 
able to conduct inspections at military sites as well. The rule must be 
full access--anytime, anywhere.
  Iran must also fully account for its past efforts to develop nuclear 
weapons. Unless it does so, there is no way to establish a baseline 
from which to measure its current capacities and potential future 
violations and responsibly gauge a ``breakout time.''
  Mr. Speaker, these are minimum criteria. In order to get 
congressional approval, any deal the President presents to Congress 
will have to have met them. The Nuclear Agreement Review Act gives 
Congress the authority to review any agreement with Iran and to pass a 
joint resolution barring any statutory sanctions relief. The 
administration and the Iranian Government need to know that the vast 
majority of my colleagues will be as firm as I am in insisting on them. 
I am certainly prepared to vote against any agreement that does not 
meet these criteria.
  Mr. Speaker, the Obama administration has shown itself far too weak 
in dealing with Iran. For example, last week, Secretary Kerry said that 
the United States is ``not fixated'' on Iran's explaining its past 
behavior--a significant backtracking on his earlier insistence on this 
crucial point.
  In fact, throughout June, we have been reading disturbing reports of 
administration weakness in the negotiations on a whole range of 
issues--from demanding access to potential nuclear sites to signaling a 
willingness to repeal non-nuclear-related sanctions. Just yesterday, 
five of the President's top former Iran advisers wrote an open letter, 
warning that the agreement ``may fall short of meeting the 
administration's own standard of a `good' agreement.'' The letter 
outlined concerns about concessions at the same time that Ayatollah Ali 
Khamenei appeared to back away from other preliminary understandings.
  There are many other signs of the administration's weakness, Mr. 
Speaker, in its dealings with Iran. Fundamentally, it refuses to speak 
truths that are obvious to everyone: that the Iranian Government has 
made itself the enemy of the United States and the genocidal enemy of 
the State of Israel, and that our goal must always be to prevent it 
from acquiring or manufacturing nuclear weapons now and long into the 
future. A nuclear Iran would be a grave threat to our country and an 
existential threat to Israel, our closest ally. That is intolerable. 
The administration seems to no longer recall that Iran is the leading 
sponsor of Hezbollah and Hamas.
  Mr. Speaker, the case of Pastor Saeed Abedini is another sad sign of 
administration weakness toward Iran. Saeed Abedini is an American 
citizen. He was in Iran in 2012, visiting family and building an 
orphanage, when he was taken prisoner. As a matter of fact, he had been 
given permission by the Iranians to do just that. Twelve years before, 
he had converted to Christianity and, later, was involved in the home 
church movement in Iran. Knowing about his conversion and earlier 
engagement in home churches, Iranian authorities approved his 2012 
trip, approved his orphanage building, and then imprisoned him. He has 
been in prison ever since then and has suffered immensely from beatings 
that have caused internal bleeding, death threats, solitary 
confinement, and more. His wife, Naghmeh, who is also an American and 
has been a heroic champion for her husband and their two children, has 
also suffered. I have chaired two hearings when we have heard from 
Naghmeh, who told the compelling story of her husband, of her love for 
her husband, of the gross injustice that he has been forced to suffer. 
It is time the administration made this a priority and a very, very 
important matter in the nuclear negotiations.
  The administration is not doing enough to secure his release. There 
is no doubt about it. The administration does little more than raise 
his case and those of other American prisoners on the sidelines of the 
nuclear negotiations because it sees the prisoners as sideline issues. 
This is an American citizen, unjustly imprisoned now for over 1,000 
days--and tortured--in Iran, and the administration has a few marginal 
conversations with Iranian officials and considers that good enough. It 
is deeply disturbing. It ought to be a central priority.
  Mr. Speaker, it is also a very alarming sign of what we might expect 
the administration to present us with when we return to session in 
early July. That is why Congress' responsibility is to be prepared to 
maintain a much firmer line on the outcome of these negotiations--when 
we review the agreement--than the administration seems to be taking.
  Mr. Speaker, I would also like to bring to the attention of my 
colleagues a couple of excerpts from today--they were released today--
from the State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 
for 2014, which reads in pertinent part:
  ``The most significant human rights problems were severe restrictions 
on civil liberties, including the freedoms of assembly, speech, 
religion, and press; limitations on the citizens' ability to change the 
government peacefully through free and fair elections; and disregard 
for the physical integrity of persons whom authorities arbitrarily and 
unlawfully detained, tortured, or killed.
  ``Other reported human rights problems included: disappearances; 
cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, including 
judicially sanctioned amputation and flogging; politically motivated 
violence and repression; harsh and life-threatening conditions in 
detention and prison facilities, with instances of deaths in custody; 
arbitrary arrest and lengthy pretrial detention, sometimes 
incommunicado; continued impunity of the security forces; denial of 
fair public trial, sometimes resulting in executions without due 
process; the lack of an independent judiciary; political prisoners and 
detainees; ineffective implementation of civil judicial procedures and 
remedies; arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, and 
correspondence; severe restrictions on freedoms of speech, including 
via the Internet, and press; harassment and arrest of journalists; 
censorship and media content restrictions; severe restrictions on 
academic freedom; severe restrictions on the freedoms of assembly and 
association.''

[[Page 10607]]



                              {time}  1800

  That is just a few of the catalog of horrors being imposed upon 
Iranians and people like our own American citizens being held in 
custody, like Pastor Saeed Abedini.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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