No 2H2O From Iran Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. DeSANTIS. I thank the chairman. I really appreciate Chairman Royce for offering this legislation, and I thank Mike Pompeo for all of his hard work.

Mr. Speaker, here is the deal. We were told by people like Ben Rhodes that the Iran agreement was going to capitalize on winds of change inside Iran and that this could be a way for Iran to cease its offending conduct and become part of the community of nations. Yet here we are, over a year out from this Iran deal, and Iran is increasing its illegal proliferation procurement activities. It is increasing its missile procurement activities. This is not the action of a country that is looking to make nice with the rest of the world. They are taking the concessions that were granted to them in this Iran deal, and they are taking advantage of them, and they are expanding their influence throughout the Middle East.

It is curious because the deal itself, I think, clearly, in looking back on it, has been a failure; but what the administration is doing is doubling down on that, and it is going even beyond what the deal says. It wants to give Iran indirect access to the American dollar. Then this purchasing of heavy water is not a requirement of the deal's. It, effectively, acts as a subsidy on Iran for Iran's nuclear program. We see other things like really lucrative aircraft deals that will help Iran transport weapons to its proxies in places like Syria and Lebanon.

Of course, there are reports about uranium being found in Parchin, one of the military sites. We are never going to be able to inspect Parchin. That is not even in the deal. That is totally off the table. Iran is not going to permit inspections there; so you could have some of this activity continuing apace there.

I think it is great that a majority of us in this House has been on the right side of this in voting against the Iran deal, in voting for a number of years to sustain very tough sanctions on Iran. And now this series of bills that we have, I think, is important, and particularly the heavy water issue, because it is an unnecessary illicit subsidy that we are sending over to Iran.

If you ask the American people whether they want their tax dollars going to subsidize Iran's nuclear program, you will have overwhelming opposition to such a policy; so I am happy to be here, speaking in favor of this and of the other measures.

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