Prohibiting the Secretary of the Treasury From Authorizing Certain Transactions Relating to Commercial Passenger Aircraft to Iran

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to the gentleman from Michigan, once again, we find ourselves in this dreary and dangerous ritual of considering a bill which, without question, would cause us to violate our agreement under the JCPOA. We get the same arguments about how bad the Iranian regime is, and we get the same misstatements like: This is President Obama's deal.

It is not President Obama's deal. It is a deal of the United Nations Security Council, of China, of Russia, of Great Britain, of France, of Germany, the U.K., and the rest of the world who combined working for a period of almost 15 years hammered out a deal--and I say this as a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence--which today has removed Iran as a nuclear threat.

Yet, here again, we are offered a bill that would compromise our obligations and almost certainly result in centrifuges spinning once again in Tehran and then leading on to the very likely prospect of yet another Middle Eastern war.

Yes, Iran is a sponsor of terrorism. Yes, it is a bad place. You will get no argument from this side of the aisle that this is a bad regime.

Once again, I remind my Republican friends that their patron saint, Ronald Reagan, made a nuclear deal with the Soviet Union, also a sponsor of terrorism, an appalling regime; but Ronald Reagan was smart enough to know that you can make a deal that makes everybody safer even with some very bad people. Ronald Reagan.
One thing I know as a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is that what used to be a mortal national security threat to the United States--2 to 3 months from breakout time, 2 to 3 months over which would almost certainly be involved in yet another war in the Middle East--has been taken off the table.

Now, the Republicans not only seek to scuttle that deal with all of the implications, but they do it by stopping an American company from selling a flagship American product around the world. If you use the Department of Commerce's multiplier, the bill they are pushing today would result in 100,000 American jobs not created so that they can continue with this fetish of eliminating a deal, which has made us safer.

If there is any question about whether this has made us safer, let me again quote General Gadi Eizenkot, who is the chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces. He said the deal has actually removed the most serious danger to Israel's existence for the foreseeable future and greatly reduced the threat over the longer term. That is the chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, but my friends in the Republican Party know better about what is good for Israel.

These sad charades end pretty soon because the bluff has been called.

President Trump has said he will tear up the Iran deal. When he does that--because this, of course, is not becoming law--the centrifuges will spin again. To my friends on the other side of the aisle, when the centrifuges are spinning, we and I will stand here and we will tell the American people why centrifuges are spinning again. And where we were 2 years ago when we thought we were going to war with Iran, if we go to Iran, when Israeli planes are bombing Iran, we will stand here and explain why we are now in another Middle Eastern war. We can avoid that by ending these charades and finally accepting this deal.

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