Trade Act of 2015
Floor Speech
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Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I rise to discuss a very troubled part of the world, the Middle East, a region that is experiencing perhaps the greatest turmoil it has seen since the end of the First World War.
After more than 4 years, with over 200,000 people killed and 4 million forced to flee, Syria's civil war and humanitarian crisis continues to drag on. President Assad still clings to power, and he clings to that power with the help of Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah.
Opposition groups remain divided, and they are weak, while terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda's al-Nusra Front exploit the chaos. ISIS also exploits sectarian tensions across the border in Iraq, where its fighters battle Iraqi and Kurdish forces, as well as Shia militias, for control of large parts of the country. And, according to press reports, a Saudi-led coalition meanwhile battles Iranian-backed Houthi rebels for control of Yemen, home to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
In addition to its support for Assad and terror and proxy groups, Iran continues other hostile activities, such as testing ballistic missiles, attacking in cyberspace, and violating human rights. I think this is an important thing to remember, as the expectations of the Iranian joint nuclear agreement--this was not a panacea for all of the things that Iran is doing. As a matter of fact, it specifically was a negotiation to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon, which I think has been achieved for at least 10, if not 15 to 25, years.
Then, to add to the complications regarding Iran, there are still four Americans detained or missing. One that is missing, of course, is our Floridian Bob Levinson, a former FBI agent.
These are tough challenges that reflect a changing balance of power, and we have already taken important steps to meet them. I am talking about steps other than the Iranian nuclear joint agreement. American and coalition air strikes against ISIS in both Iraq and Syria and the training and equipping of Iraqi and Kurdish forces in Iraq have blunted ISIS's momentum, and we are starting to see some reverses there. As the Secretary of Defense just a few days ago told our Armed Services Committee, we are changing our approach to supporting the moderate Syrian opposition and equipping those forces already on the battlefield against ISIS. It is much more difficult in Syria, and we have not had a lot of success in training and equipping those so-called moderate forces in Syria.
So now the changing strategy is that the United States is focusing on what the Secretary of Defense referred to as the ``three R's''--the ISIS strongholds of Raqqa in Syria and Ramadi in Iraq and then targeted raids in both to build battlefield momentum. We saw such a raid that tragically took the life of a senior enlisted Special Forces Special Operations sergeant the other day, but that raid was particularly successful in that it rescued 70 people who were about to be executed the next morning. In those raids, the three R's the Secretary mentioned are underway.
Turmoil and violence in the Middle East may seem distant to everyday Americans, but the consequences extend far beyond those regions. We see it daily on our television screens. Tens of thousands of Syrians have sought refuge in Europe. ISIS, we are reminded, uses the Internet and social media to spread its propaganda and radicalizes young people far from Iraq and Syria and even some in the United States.
So in this whole perplexing problem, as we try to get our arms around it, meeting these challenges, protecting our national security and interests, including those of our allies like Israel, is going to take strong and patient leadership on the part of our country.
I wanted to share these thoughts with the Senate.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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