House Foreign Affairs Committee Debates Nuke Talks

 

 

“This Committee has been at the forefront of examining the threat of a nuclear Iran. Much of the pressure that brought Tehran to the table was put in place by Congress over the objections of the Executive Branch – whether Republican or Democrat. And we’d have more pressure on Iran today if the Administration hadn’t pressured the Senate to sit on the Royce-Engel sanctions bill this Committee produced and passed in 2013.

 

Congress is proud of this role. And we want to see the Administration get a lasting and meaningful agreement. But unfortunately, the Administration’s negotiating strategy has been more about managing proliferation than preventing it.

 

Case in point: Iran’s uranium enrichment program, the key technology needed to developing a nuclear bomb. Reportedly, the Administration would be agreeable to leaving much of Iran’s enrichment capacity in place for a decade. If Congress will be asked to “roll-back” its sanctions on Iran – which will certainly fund its terrorist activities - there must be a substantial “roll-back” of Iran’s nuclear program.

 

And consider that international inspectors report that Iran has still not revealed its past bomb work - despite its commitment to do so. The IAEA is still concerned about signs of Iran’s military-related activities; including designing a nuclear payload for a missile. Iran hasn’t even begun to address these concerns. Last fall, over 350 Members wrote to the Secretary of State expressing deep concerns about this lack of cooperation. How can we expect Iran to uphold an agreement when they are not meeting their current commitments?

 

Indeed, we were not surprised to see Iran continue to illicitly procure nuclear technology during these negotiations. Or that Tehran was caught testing a more advanced centrifuge that would help produce bomb material quicker. This was certainly a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the interim agreement. Iran’s deception is all the more reason that the Administration should obtain zero-notice, anywhere, anytime inspections on Iran’s declared and undeclared facilities.

 

There is also the fact that limits placed on Iran’s nuclear program as part of the final agreement now being negotiated will expire. That means, the “final” agreement is just another interim step, with the real final step being Iran treated as “any other” non-nuclear weapon state under the NonProliferation Treaty - licensing it to pursue industrial scale enrichment.

 

With a deep history of deception, covert procurement, and clandestine facilities, Iran is not “any other” country, to be conceded an industrial scale nuclear program. Any meaningful agreement must keep restrictions in place for decades – as over 360 Members of Congress – including every Member of this Committee - are demanding in a letter to the President.

 

Meanwhile, Iran is intensifying its destructive role in the region. Tehran is propping up Assad in Syria, while its proxy Hezbollah threatens Israel. Iranian-backed Shia militia are killing hopes for a unified, stable Iraq. And last month, an Iranian-backed militia displaced the government in Yemen, a key counterterrorism partner. Many of our allies and partners see Iran pocketing an advantageous nuclear agreement and ramping up its aggression in the region.

 

This Committee is prepared to evaluate any agreement to determine if it is in the long-term national security interests of the United States and our allies. Indeed, as Secretary Kerry testified not long ago, any agreement will have to “pass muster with Congress.” Yet that commitment has been muddied by the Administration’s insistence in recent weeks that Congress not play a role.

 

That’s not right. Congress built the sanctions structure that brought Iran to the table. And if the President moves to dismantle it, we will have a say.”

 

“Any comprehensive arrangement must include tight constraints on Iran’s nuclear program and extraordinary monitoring and intrusive transparency measures that maximize the international community’s ability to detect any attempt by Iran to break out, overtly or covertly. As a practical matter, our goal is to ensure that, should Iran renege on its commitments, it would take at least one year to produce enough fissile material for one nuclear weapon. That would provide us more than enough time to detect and act on any Iranian transgression.

 

In exchange, the international community would provide Iran with phased sanctions relief tied to verifiable actions on its part. Such relief would be structured so that it can be easily reversed, and sanctions can be quickly reimposed, if Iran were to violate its commitments.”

 

“Much has been said recently about the fact that a deal with Iran would have an eventual end date. On the contrary, we see the deal as creating a series of phases to ensure that Iran’s program is exclusively peaceful going forward. While some constraints would be removed after a significant period of time, others would remain in effect longer, and some would last indefinitely. For example, Iran’s NPT obligation not to develop or acquire a nuclear weapon would continue indefinitely, as would its obligation to implement its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Moreover, a centerpiece of the proposed deal is that Iran would accept the Additional Protocol, which is not currently in place, as legally binding, and which would allow the IAEA to continue to have more stringent and intrusive access to nuclear-related information and locations indefinitely. The same is true regarding Iran’s implementation of Modified Code 3.1, which imposes an ongoing obligation to provide early notification of design information for any new nuclear facilities."

 

"Some have argued that Iran would be free to develop a nuclear weapon at the conclusion of a comprehensive joint plan of action. That is simply not true. To the contrary, Iran would be prohibited from developing a nuclear weapon in perpetuity – and we would have a much greater ability to detect any effort by Iran to do so and to take appropriate measures in response, with the support of the international community. Iran would be allowed to have a peaceful, civilian nuclear program continuously verified by the IAEA.”

 

“As we have said from the beginning, nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to, and it may be we will not know if a deal is possible until the last minute. So I cannot tell you where we will be a week from now, or by the end of the month. But what I can promise you, and what President Obama has pledged, is that we will not agree to a bad deal. What does that mean? As I noted earlier, an acceptable deal must effectively close down all four pathways Iran could take to obtain enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon. It must include strict curbs on its nuclear program and robust transparency and monitoring measures that give the international community confidence in the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program and the ability to promptly detect overt and covert breakout. It must include all the elements already spelled out in the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA). And, fundamentally, it must make the United States, our allies and partners in the Middle East, and the world safer.”

 

“If our international partners believe that the United States has acted prematurely by adding new sanctions now in the absence of a provocation by Iran – as most countries surely would – their willingness to enforce the existing sanctions regime or to add to it in the event negotiations fail will wane. And a fractured international consensus notwithstanding, even if we were to layer additional sanctions on Iran, their nuclear advances would far outpace any potential marginal pressure created by those sanctions. This is why the support of the international community remains crucial, and why new sanctions now are a dangerously imprudent step. Without full international compliance, the sanctions regime will be dramatically diluted. Up until now, we have kept other countries on board – despite the hardship it has caused to some of their economic interests – in large part because they are convinced we are serious about reaching a diplomatic solution. If they lose that conviction, the United States, not Iran, could be isolated, and the sanctions regime could collapse. Ultimately, the United States and its allies in the Middle East would be less safe.

 

In short, a collapse in negotiations caused by us, or perceived to be caused by us rather than by the Iranians, would lead to a growing Iranian nuclear program and a collapsing international sanctions regime. Now is not the time to provoke such a collapse.

 

Congress has a significant role to play in these discussions and has been playing it for years. It is existing congressional legislation that helped us get Iran to the negotiating table. The whole point of sanctions was to create this dynamic, and it has worked, but it has only worked when coupled with the type of robust diplomacy that is currently underway. Since signing the JPOA, we have been on the Hill dozens of times over the past year to update you and your staff about the progress of the talks – in all, more than 200 briefings, hearings, meetings and phone calls. And if a deal is finalized, Congress will certainly have a robust role to play in potentially taking action on future statutory sanctions relief once Iran has demonstrated a track record of living up to its commitments.”

 

“We will not relax our efforts to hold Iran accountable for its nefarious actions, regardless of the outcome of nuclear negotiations. But it is essential to understand that the most important thing we can do to keep Iran from feeling further emboldened to spread instability is to deny them the ability to obtain a nuclear weapon. That is why the nuclear negotiations are so important, and why this is a challenge that must be dealt with now.”

 

“As we speak, negotiators from the P5+1 are hard at work trying to secure a political framework for a comprehensive deal with Iran. We may get a deal; we may not. Regardless of whether or not the negotiations succeed, I want to assure this Committee that the Treasury Department, and the Administration more broadly, are prepared for what comes next.

 

If we are able to secure a comprehensive deal, we will structure the nuclear-related sanctions relief in a way that is staged and commensurate with verifiable steps on Iran’s part. We believe that legislative sanctions should be suspended first before they are terminated by Congress, so that we continue to retain important leverage years into a deal. Put simply, Iran will not receive comprehensive relief from nuclear-related sanctions absent proof that it has concretely and verifiably carried out what is expected of it as part of a comprehensive deal.

Moreover, even if we are able to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the United States will continue to counter Iran’s support for terrorism, its commission of human rights abuses, and its destabilizing activities throughout the Middle East, including through the active use of our financial tools.

 

Alternatively, if we determine that a comprehensive deal with Iran cannot be obtained, the Administration, working with Congress, can move to ratchet up the pressure on Iran from sanctions. Over the past decade, we have developed tremendous insight into Iran’s financial flows, its economy’s stress points, and how it attempts to evade sanctions. Our team stands ready to raise the costs on Iran substantially should it make clear that it is unwilling to address the international community’s concerns. Close cooperation with our international partners will be critical should we have to go that route.

 

In either eventuality, we are committed to working with Congress to ensure that our sanctions continue to serve our national security goals, whether to ensure that Iran abides by the conditions of a deal if it can accept those conditions, or to raise the costs substantially if Iran demonstrates that further negotiations are futile.”

 

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