Iran Sanctions Extension Bill

Floor Speech

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Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I noticed the majority leader has given us all notice that, after consultation with the Democratic leader, he intends to bring up the Iran Sanctions Act, H.R. 6297. I point out that this legislation passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 419 to 1.

It is legislation that would extend the Iran Sanctions Act that was passed by this Congress that is set to expire at the end of this year.

Let me repeat that. The Iran Sanctions Act, which was enacted originally in 1996--if no action is taken before the end of December, that sanction authorization legislation would expire.

This is our last opportunity to extend the Iran Sanctions Act before it is scheduled to expire at the end of December. It was passed in 1996 by a unanimous vote of this body. Its goal was to deny Iran the ability to be able to have financial support for its nuclear proliferation.

Congress had passed several bills that provided sanction opportunities by the administration to impose sanctions in order to get Iran to change its behavior, its illegal activities in pursuing a nuclear weapon, which was against U.S. security interests, destabilizing for the entire region, threatened Israel, threatened the neighboring states. It was, I think, the unanimous view of our body that we had to take whatever steps were possible to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapon power.

The legislation we passed, including the Iran Sanctions Act, allowed the Obama administration to move forward with sanctions against Iran, and they rigorously enforced the sanctions they imposed. I want to acknowledge the work done by the Obama administration in enforcing those sanctions that we gave our authorization to impose.

But the Obama administration went further than that. They then garnered international support to also impose and support the sanctions that we had imposed in the United States, which was strong enough to get Iran to recognize that they had to come to the negotiating table.

Clearly, the sanctions were the motivating factor that allowed for the negotiations of the nuclear agreement that was agreed to 2 years ago.

This legislation is pretty simple. It extends for 10 years the Iran Sanctions Act that was used by the administration and in which we have a temporary--we have relief granted under that law as long as Iran is in compliance with the nuclear agreement. The nuclear agreement, JCPOA, specifically provides for the snapback of sanctions in the event that Iran violates the provisions of the agreement.

In order to have snapbacks, you have to have the sanction regime in place. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to extend the sanction authorization. This does not impose any new sanctions on Iran. That it does not. It is not in violation of the JCPOA. It just allows us to have effective enforcement to make sure Iran complies with their commitments. I want to underscore that point. During the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, I had a chance to ask the administration's witness, Secretary Lew, that specific question. I asked Secretary Lew-- this question was asked July 23, 2015. I said to the witness:

The Iran Sanctions Act expires at the end of 2016. We will still be in the JCPOA a period of time where snapback of sanctions is a viable hedge against Iran's cheating. Congress may well want to extend that law so that power is available immediately if Iran were to violate the agreement. Is that permitted under the JCPOA?

The answer from Secretary Lew:

I think that if it is on expiration, it is one thing. If it is well in advance, it is another. I think the idea of coming out of the box right now is very different from what you would do when it expires.

Well, we are doing exactly what the administration asked us to do. We have held off for over--now it has been over 15 months, 16 months that we have held off before we have taken action to extend the Iran Sanctions Act. If we don't take action now, the authority given by Congress in the 1996 act, which would empower the snapbacks if needed, would not be available. So it is timely for us to act. It is totally consistent with the JCPOA and is not at all inconsistent with our responsibilities under that legislation.

I think, though, that we should have a little bit of a discussion as to what we do moving forward. I should point out that the Iran Sanctions Act, H.R. 6297, is identical to S. 3281, legislation I filed with 19 of my colleagues earlier this year. So I think this enjoys strong bipartisan support, and I urge my colleagues to support it.
Now, looking forward--I did not support the JCPOA. I did not support that agreement for various reasons, but it went into effect. I must tell my colleagues, I think it would be tragic if the United States unilaterally walked away from the Iran nuclear agreement. What that would do is give the ability to Iran to pursue a nuclear weapons program without inspectors on the ground to let us know what they were doing. They would be able to pursue that, knowing full well that the international community would not be unified in regard to sanctions against Iran.

Yes, we would impose sanctions, but our allies around the world would no longer be obligated to follow that, since it was the United States pulling out of the agreement.

Many of those countries already have arrangements, and it would be very difficult to see that they would follow U.S. leadership. In fact, one of the adverse impacts of the United States walking away from the Iran agreement would be that we would lose our standing as an international leader, bringing the international community together to isolate Iran. Instead, we would be isolating the United States. That is not in our national security interest.

So what should we do? Well, as I said earlier, the first step is to pass H.R. 6297 so that we have all of the tools in place. Secondly, let us all join together to rigorously enforce the Iran agreement, the JCPOA. We need to do that. We need to make sure that every part of that agreement is adhered to, including making sure Iran never becomes a nuclear weapons state. We need to continue the use of sanctions on Iran's nonnuclear nefarious activities.

They are still a sponsor of terrorism. We all know that. I was recently in the Middle East. I had a chance to talk to a lot of our strategic partners. They tell me about Iran's activities in their region, how they are supporting efforts to destabilize other sovereign states in the Middle East. They are supporting terrorism.

We also know that they have expanded their ballistic program. That is in contravention to their international obligations. We can impose sanctions and continue to strengthen sanctions against Iran in regard to those activities. They are violating the human rights of the citizens of their own country. We can take actions there.
There are areas where we can continue to work with the international community to deal with Iran's nefarious activities. We should do that.

I would just call to my colleagues' attention that several--actually in October of 2015, I introduced S. 2119, along with several of my colleagues, so that the Congress would be in a better position to carry out rigorous enforcement of the JCPOA and to take on Iran, working with our partners, in regard to their other activities.

It provides more information to the Congress on how the sanction relief resources are being used by Iran so that we can track the money.

If they use it to support terrorism against the United States or they use it against our interests, we would be able to know about that and take action.

It provides for expedited considerations if Iran commits these types of violations. It makes it very clear that we will continue to work on a regional security strategy so that our partners in the region know that the United States will continue to be on their side against the aggression that we have seen from the Iran regime. To me, that is the responsible action for us to take in order to carry out what should be U.S. leadership in isolating Iran, getting it to change its behavior, recognizing that it has been a major problem for the security of the United States in the region, and we must continue to be actively engaged.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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