Approval of Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

Floor Speech

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Mr. BISHOP of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to raise my vehement objection to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and to call on my colleagues to do the same.

In March, I joined 346 of my bipartisan colleagues in a letter outlining the issues needed to be addressed by Iran in a comprehensive nuclear agreement.

The last sentence of that agreement said: Congress must be convinced that the agreement's terms foreclose any pathway to a bomb, and then and only then will Congress be able to consider permanent sanctions relief.

Mr. Speaker, I have read this entire agreement, and I am profoundly disappointed to say that it falls remarkably short of foreclosing a pathway to a bomb.

To the contrary, this agreement brings Iran to the brink of becoming a nuclear weapons state and 8 short years from now provides them a pathway to acquiring technology to strike Europe and well beyond.

To ease the concerns of my noncommittal colleagues, the President has promised a military option remains on the table.

I am simply awestricken by the fact that my colleagues on the left have fallen for these assurances. It is the same administration that promised the red line in Syria.

It is the same empty rhetoric that has sustained the Syrian civil war, the Libyan civil war, ISIL's control of western Iraq, and, of course, the imperialist Vladimir Putin that has annexed the sovereign territory of the Ukraine.

I therefore urge my colleagues to reject this deal and any deal that enables a belligerent state sponsor of terror to have access to hundreds of billions of dollars and nuclear weapons that will allow its atrocities to continue in perpetuity, all the while four Americans, one of them a native of the State of Michigan, my home State, Amir Hekmati, is being held hostage.

Mr. Speaker, in no other world, public or private, would this agreement be considered credible.

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Mr. BISHOP of Michigan. I was saying that, in no other world, Mr. Speaker--and to all of you--having served in the public and in the private sector, have I ever seen an agreement where we are negotiating with a party that has no respect for the other party.

In this case, the Supreme Leader of the State of Iran as late as yesterday referred to the United States as the Great Satan and called for us to be wiped off the face of the Earth, not just Israel.

We are the Great Satan. They are Satan, according to the Ayatollah. We are the Great Satan. I object to entering into an agreement with a country that has no respect.

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