Stop Harboring Iranian Petroleum Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 3774.

The goal of this legislation is simple: to prevent Iran from profiting off of its petroleum reserves.

The tyrannical Iranian regime uses these profits to fund its terrorism and proxy activities, as well as to make advancements in its nuclear program.

The SHIP Act aims to apply unilateral, mandatory sanctions on anyone who does any of the following with Iranian oil: operate a port that accepts or transfers the oil; operate a refinery that possesses Iranian oil; run a business that purchases, sells, or finances Iranian oil; ships Iranian oil; or knowingly works at any facility that handles Iranian oil.

Without a doubt, the target of these sanctions is China, the largest purchaser of Iranian oil. If China stopped buying oil from Iran, Iran would be starved of the funds it uses to destabilize its region and the world.

This is not something we can achieve overnight without impacting the global energy and shipping economy. In today's interconnected world, where China is a major player and a trading partner of the United States, we cannot be shielded from the economic impacts these sanctions might cause. That is why if this legislation is signed into law, we must be both smart and forceful during its implementation, and we must be honest with the American people about why we are willing and why we must take this risk.

Sanctions are a diplomatic tool. They are not an end in themselves. The bold petroleum and financial sanctions that drove Iran to the table to negotiate JCPOA were multilateral, and we did the hard work of uniting the world behind the policy before the implementation of those sanctions.

As it stands today, we would be going at this policy alone. That is why Congress should work with this and any future administration to do the hard diplomatic work of bringing allies and partners into the plan. That is what will ultimately increase our chances of succeeding.

While I am a proud cosponsor of this bill, I am also concerned by the very limited flexibility the administration would have with the waiver in this bill. It is one of the strictest standards that can be found in law. I am open to addressing that aspect of the bill if this measure goes to conference with the Senate to ensure that the waiver provision isn't virtually unusable.

Due to the clear and present threat posed by Iran to the United States and our allies, I believe we must use every tool at our disposal to address the challenge. The new sanctions offered by the SHIP Act provide important tools in our toolbox that could end Chinese purchases of oil.

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Mr. SCHNEIDER. Mr. Speaker, I do want to reflect on the comments of my friend, Mr. Hill, because he brings up a really important point.

It is vitally important to understand that Iran connects a lot of dots:

Iran is funding Hamas that attacked Israel and massacred 1,400 people and took 240 hostages, including Americans.

Iran is providing weapons to Russia in their attack on Ukraine.

Iran is selling oil to China.

The war in Gaza and the war in Ukraine have a lot of common denominators. Both are wars against democracies with the intent of wiping out those democracies, but no intent, either with Putin in Russia or Hamas against Israel, in stopping there.

The United States has an important role in leading and bringing together the world to support our allies in Ukraine and Israel. That is why it is so important that, as we stand here in a most perilous time, we unite as a body in this Congress to support our allies, not to divide, not to use political gamesmanship to use Israel as a partisan wedge, but to say we will stand together and support our allies. That is why I call our folks to come to this body and support the President's supplemental request.

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Mr. SCHNEIDER. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3774 is an important effort to cut funding off from the Iranian regime. I strongly urge my colleagues to support this measure.

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