Iran Freedom Support Act
IRAN FREEDOM SUPPORT ACT -- (House of Representatives - September 28, 2006)
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Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this bill, and let me give you a few reasons why.
In the introduction to the bill, it says that its purpose is to hold the current regime in Iran accountable for its threatening behavior and to support a transition of its government; and I would just ask one question: Could it be possible that others around the world and those in Iran see us as participating in ``threatening behavior?'' We should make an attempt to see things from other people's view as well.
I want to give you three quick reasons why I think we should not be going at it this way:
First, this is a confrontational manner of dealing with a problem. A country that is powerful and self-confident should never need to resort to confrontation. If one is confident, one should be willing to use diplomacy whether dealing with our friends or our enemies; I think the lack of confidence motivates resolutions of this type.
The second reason that I will give you for opposing this is that this is clearly seeking regime change in Iran. We are taking it upon ourselves that we do not like the current regime. I don't like Almadinyad, but do we have the responsibility and the authority to orchestrate regime change? We approach this by doing two things: Sanctions to penalize, at the same time giving aid to those groups that we expect to undermine the government. Do you know if somebody came into this country and paid groups to undermine our government, that is illegal? Yet here we are casually paying money, millions of dollars, unlimited sums of money to undermine that government. This is illegal.
The third point. This bill rejects the notion of the nonproliferation treaty. The Iranians have never been proven to be in violation of the nonproliferation treaty; and this explicitly says that they cannot enrich, uranium even for private and commercial purposes.
For these three reasons we obviously should reconsider and not use this confrontational approach. Why not try diplomacy? Oppose this resolution.
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