[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 765-766]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      NUCLEAR AGREEMENT WITH IRAN

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, those are some things I didn't plan to say 
but I felt compelled to say as a warmup to what I really wanted to say, 
and that is to talk about the agreement we struck with Iran and some of 
the things that have been happening since then with us, the United 
States, and five other nations.
  Over the past couple of weeks, the Obama administration's decision to 
engage with Iran, along with these other five nations, through 
diplomacy instead of military action has faced key tests. The results 
are in, and the agreement that we struck--the United States, the Brits, 
the Germans, the French, the Chinese, the Russians, and the Iranians--
appears to be working thus far, and, God willing, we may actually be on 
our way to being safe as a result.
  This test began on the high seas 2 weeks ago when the United States 
and Iran faced a crisis that could have ended tragically. Two U.S. Navy 
vessels carrying a total of 10 crewmembers strayed into Iran's 
territorial waters. They were detained by Iran, and as many of us know, 
they appeared on Iranian television. The American vessels were 
somewhere they should not have been. It was a mistake.
  As a former naval flight officer who served 5 years in a hot war in 
Southeast Asia and another 18 years--right up to end of the Cold War--
as a P3 aircraft mission commander, I know this is a mistake we never 
want to make. Defense Secretary Ash Carter acknowledged that the error 
had been made, and the sailors were released unharmed within 24 hours 
of being detained. Flashbacks of past hostage crises and destabilizing 
tensions were on all of our minds as we watched this story unfold. 
However, thanks to a more cooperative and productive diplomatic 
relationship with Iran, the sailors were released within 24 hours.
  As the week came to a close, we saw additional encouraging 
validations that the administration's Iran strategy is beginning to 
bear fruit. Following months of the most intrusive nuclear inspections 
in history, international weapons inspectors concluded that Iran had 
indeed followed through on its pledge in the nuclear deal to dismantle 
the parts of its nuclear program that were clearly not intended for 
peaceful purposes.
  The International Atomic Energy Agency certified that Iran had 
reduced its stockpile of enriched uranium by 98 percent and that the 
remaining uranium was only enriched to levels consistent with peaceful 
energy uses. The inspectors certified that nearly 15,000 centrifuges 
for enriching uranium have been dismantled. That leaves Iran with only 
its least sophisticated centrifuges, which can be used solely for 
peaceful purposes. The inspectors revealed that a special reactor for 
producing the kind of plutonium needed for a nuclear bomb in Iran will 
produce no more. It has been filled with concrete instead. Finally, the 
nuclear watchdogs certified that the inspections and monitoring systems 
of Iran's nuclear facility and nuclear supply chain have been stood up 
to ensure Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal.
  All of this happened much faster than most of us would have expected. 
It certainly happened faster than I expected it would. In fact, some 
critics of the nuclear deal said that Iran would never live up to the 
promises it had made--never. Yet, despite that skepticism, today we see 
an Iran that has taken irreversible steps to dismantle its nuclear 
weapons program in order to make good on its pledges.

  Amid the nuclear deal's implementation, the United States achieved 
another diplomatic breakthrough with Iran--one that I and a number of 
my colleagues had a hand in.

  The Iranians released five individuals--all dual U.S.-Iranian 
citizens--that they had been detaining in Iran for some years. Their 
release was the result of intense diplomatic negotiations. Secretary 
Kerry and his team of

[[Page 766]]

negotiators worked overtime to secure their freedom. They deserve our 
appreciation and our thanks.
  I had never forgotten about these Americans, and neither had my 
colleagues. Whenever we spoke or met with senior Iranian officials in 
recent years, we consistently called on them to release our unjustly 
detained citizens. The end result is that these Americans are free to 
rejoin their families in America instead of rotting in an Iranian 
prison.
  The events and achievements that occurred during these 6 days were a 
remarkable validation that the Obama administration and those of us in 
Congress who voted to support the nuclear deal had made the right 
choice. But our challenges with Iran have not vanished--not by a long 
shot. Iran continues to support terrorist organizations like Hezbollah. 
Iraq props up the Assad regime in Syria. Iran tests and develops 
ballistic missiles in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions. 
Another American, former FBI agent Bob Levinson, disappeared 8 years 
ago in Iran, and the Iranian government needs to do all it can to help 
return him to his family or, if they can't do that--if he is no longer 
alive--at least help find out what happened to this American. Also, of 
course, Iran refuses to recognize Israel's right to even exist.
  Addressing these problems with Iran will not be easy. They will 
require the same kind of intense negotiations and pressure that helped 
to bring about an end to Iran's nuclear weapons program and the release 
of the detained Americans. That means our relationship with Iran will 
not always be composed of carrots. There may very well be times when 
sticks are needed to try to convince that Nation's regime to change its 
behavior toward us and our allies, including Israel.
  Perhaps no action better illustrates these dynamics than the United 
States' recent move to increase sanctions on Iran for its illegal 
testing of ballistic missiles--something that is a clear violation of 
the sanctions. At the same time that the U.S. was lifting nuclear 
sanctions on Iran as part of the nuclear deal, the Obama administration 
was leveling sanctions against 11 entities for their role in supporting 
Iran's ballistic missile program.
  Addressing our challenges with Iran over the long term will also 
require this administration, along with future administrations and 
Congress, to adopt a forward-thinking foreign policy that looks beyond 
the rhetoric of Iran's current regime.
  I have a chart here that I want to share with everyone tonight. It is 
a collage of photographs. I believe these photographs were taken in the 
aftermath of the decision to approve the agreement--a decision reached 
by the United States and our five negotiating partners and the 
government of Iran. This is a collage of photographs that indicates the 
measure of joy the Iranian people are reacting to this successful 
negotiation with.
  I just want to say Iran is little understood by most Americans. They 
have 78 million people there today. The average age of those people is 
under the age of 25--a lot like the young people we see in these 
photographs. For the most part, they are all educated. The lion's share 
of them don't remember the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the taking of 
American hostages at our embassy or the cruel Shah whom we supported 
until his ouster. This is a population, reflected in these photographs, 
that appears more focused on building Iran's troubled economy than 
pursuing antagonizing military activities favored by the Supreme Leader 
and by many of the Revolutionary Guard.
  In the weeks ahead, this new generation of young Iranians will head 
to the polls--sometime in the month of February--to choose the 
country's next parliament, as well as an entity called its Council of 
Experts, which I believe is the body that will help to choose the next 
Supreme Leader of Iran. At stake for these Iranians is the choice 
between the policies of engagement and economic revival being 
vigorously pursued by President Rouhani, Foreign Minister Zarif, and 
their supporters, as opposed to the politics of antagonism and 
destabilization that are apparently favored by the Supreme Leader and 
many in the Revolutionary Guard.
  We have seen photographs this week of President Rouhani meeting not 
just with Pope Francis--the first meeting between the leader of Iran 
and the Pope in close to 20 years--but also of his meetings throughout 
Europe, calling on countries, calling on businesses in order to try to 
solicit and pave the way for investments not in weaponry, not in aid to 
Hezbollah, but investments in roads, highways, and bridges--things that 
we need, but they need them a whole lot worse. Their roads, their 
highways and bridges, their airports and trains make ours look like the 
21st century. They need to invest in those things.
  They have a lot of oil. They have the ability to pump a lot more. I 
think they pump about 300,000 barrels a day. By the end of this year, 
they will have the ability to pump as much as 1 million barrels of oil 
a day, and they are not going to do that without enormous investments 
in their oil infrastructure. They have a great need to do that. These 
young people know that. That is where they would like to spend that 
money.
  We should help make the upcoming parliamentary elections in February 
for these voters and others an easy choice. We should continue to show 
the people of Iran that their cooperation and their commitment to peace 
will be rewarded. How? With economic opportunity and the shedding of 
Iran's status as a pariah in the international community.
  We ought to listen to these people. They are not much older than the 
pages who are sitting here in front of us this evening. They are 
interested in their country changing for the better. They are 
interested in reform. A number of them have relatives who live over 
here in our country, and there are a lot of Iranian Americans who live 
here. For the most part, they are very valued citizens, and people 
would be proud to call them Americans.
  We need to listen to these young people who are calling for reform 
and who want to reconnect Iran to the international community. Frankly, 
it would be wise of us to do so for the sake of our security and for 
the sake of the security of our allies and for stability in the Middle 
East.
  Mr. President, I see no one waiting to be recognized at this time.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for as 
much time as I may consume.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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