[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
IMPLICATIONS OF A NUCLEAR AGREEMENT WITH
IRAN (PART IV)
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 9, 2015
__________
Serial No. 114-103
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida BRAD SHERMAN, California
DANA ROHRABACHER, California GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TED POE, Texas BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
MATT SALMON, Arizona KAREN BASS, California
DARRELL E. ISSA, California WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
MO BROOKS, Alabama AMI BERA, California
PAUL COOK, California ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas GRACE MENG, New York
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
RON DeSANTIS, Florida TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
TED S. YOHO, Florida ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
CURT CLAWSON, Florida BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee
REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin
DAVID A. TROTT, Michigan
LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
TOM EMMER, MinnesotaUntil 5/18/
15 deg.
DANIEL DONOVAN, New YorkAs
of 5/19/15 deg.
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
WITNESSES
General Chuck Wald, USAF, Retired (former Deputy Commander, U.S.
European Command).............................................. 5
Admiral William Fallon, USN, Retired (former Commander, U.S.
Central Command)............................................... 13
Vice Admiral John Bird, USN, Retired (former Commander, U.S.
Seventh Fleet)................................................. 18
Mr. Leon Wieseltier, Isaiah Berlin Senior Fellow in Culture and
Policy, Foreign Policy and Governance Studies, The Brookings
Institution.................................................... 24
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
General Chuck Wald, USAF, Retired: Prepared statement............ 7
Admiral William Fallon, USN, Retired: Prepared statement......... 16
Vice Admiral John Bird, USN, Retired: Prepared statement......... 20
Mr. Leon Wieseltier: Prepared statement.......................... 28
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 62
Hearing minutes.................................................. 63
The Honorable Gerald E. Connolly, a Representative in Congress
from the Commonwealth of Virginia: Prepared statement.......... 65
IMPLICATIONS OF A NUCLEAR AGREEMENT WITH IRAN (PART IV)
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WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2015
House of Representatives,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:17 a.m., in
room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ed Royce
(chairman of the committee) presiding.
Chairman Royce. This hearing will come to order. I will ask
everyone to take their seats at this time. This hearing is on
implications of a nuclear agreement with Iran. This morning,
the committee continues to examine the administration's
agreement. To help further assess this deal we are joined by
several retired officers, two admirals and a general, who
served their country with distinction, and we have a noted
thinker with us on the region.
And this, by the way, is I think the 30th hearing that we
have held on this issue, 30th hearing or briefing, since these
negotiations began. I appreciate the commitment that all the
members have made to analyze what is a very complex issue here,
as the House gets set for a vote this week. I would like to
recognize Ranking Member Engel for his partnership as we have
approached the issue in a bipartisan way throughout these
hearings.
Unfortunately, in my view, it is quite clear that this
agreement makes Iran stronger at the end of the day. I say that
because the billions of dollars here, some $100 billion
provided in immediate sanctions relief, is just a down payment,
as Iran is guaranteed a reconnection to the global economy. The
strangle on its banks and businesses, the money that has been
held in escrow, will now be returned to the regime. It will be
returned in the way of a system in Iran where the IRGC and the
Quds Forces own many of the major businesses in the country.
So it is not just unlocking this money from escrow into the
accounts of senior IRGC leaders, clerics, and the Ayatollah
himself, who increasingly controls the businesses in Iran. It
is also putting into motion what comes next in terms of future
deals, where those individuals are going to be the key
decisionmakers. They are the ones that are going to be
empowered under this agreement.
Politically, of course, that means it solidifies the
Supreme Leader's grip on power. That is why he did the deal, to
keep his revolution intact. As we said early on, the right kind
of pressure on Iran would give that Ayatollah a choice between
real compromise on his nuclear program or economic collapse,
but that legislation that we passed to put on those additional
sanctions was blocked in the Senate.
So militarily, in a few short years--if they wait that
long--Iran is free to build up its tanks, its fighter jets, its
intercontinental ballistic missiles. Its proxies in the region
can continue to wreak havoc and back terrorism. Indeed, Iran's
elite Quds Force has transferred funds to Hamas to rebuild a
network of tunnels from Gaza to attack Israel.
Myself and Ranking Member Engel have been in those tunnels.
I must tell you, reading the account in The Journal of the fact
that Israel is now going to face a situation where the Quds
Forces and the Iranian regime are going to not only rebuild the
terror tunnels, but have also made the commitment to transfer
the rockets to replenish the inventory, and on top of that, the
commitment now, the discussion on the part of Iran to transfer
the precision-guided weapons so that Hezbollah will have the
opportunity to unleash what used to be an inventory of 10,000
rockets and missiles. When I was there, in Haifa, in 2006, and
those rockets were slamming into the city, and there were 600
people in the trauma hospital, there was an inventory of
10,000. Now, thanks to Iran, there is an inventory of over
80,000 of these.
What is it that Iran seeks to do? It needs the hard
currency to transfer that capability for GPS guidance for a
system that will allow the targeting of those rockets and
missiles so that individual targets, individual buildings, the
airport, and so forth, can be hit inside Israel. That is what
we are talking about when we say that it is going to unleash
$100 billion in capital that is held right now.
Then, Iran is a few steps away from a nuclear weapons
program on an industrial scale. It will take a few years, but
at the end of that process, as the President has detailed, Iran
will be a step away from that.
As Iran grows stronger across the board, the United States
will be weaker to respond. By removing economic sanctions, the
President is withdrawing one of our most successful, peaceful
tools for confronting the Iranian regime. As international
investment pours into Iran, there is going to be tremendous
political pressure to not upset that apple cart--to keep the
agreement going at all costs, no matter what Iranian cheating
might be found. Why do I think that? Because we have already
seen General Soleimani of the Quds Force take his trek, his
trip into Russia to negotiate. We have already seen the
announcement of the Fateh 313 rocket, a missile with a range of
over 300 miles. That was presented a few weeks ago.
Is anyone speaking out about arms violations with respect
to transfer of these types of weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah?
No, no, because they don't want to upset the apple cart.
Indeed, the administration's pressure--there is a lot of
pressure on the IAEA, some of that came from the
administration--and that got us a deal with the Iranians being
able to self-inspect a key military site, setting a dangerous
precedent, frankly, for the future. Because when you set that
standard for self-inspections, that becomes the precedent that
everybody else wants, including the Iranians the next time they
are challenged on the suspicion of some particular military
site where they might be doing work. And even if we wanted to
hit back against Iran's cheating, ``snapping back'' sanctions,
I think, under these conditions, especially with the Iranians
having a vote on the seven-member consortium of countries that
are going to determine this, China having a vote, Russia having
a vote, they only have to pick off one more European country
that they are doing business with in order to make it very,
very difficult for us to have ``snapback.''
As a group of 200 retired generals and admirals recently
concluded,
``This agreement will enable Iran to become far more
dangerous, render the Mideast still more unstable, and
introduce new threats to American interests, as well as
our allies. In our professional opinion, far from being
an alternative to war, the [agreement] makes it likely
that the war the Iranian regime has waged against us
since 1979 will continue, with far higher risks to our
national security interests.''
Are the temporary restraints on Iran's nuclear program
under this agreement worth that cost? President Obama is
clearly betting that it is--that Iran will change enough over a
short 10 to 15 years to be trusted with what by then will be
internationally endorsed bomb-making technology on an
industrial scale.
But as we will hear today, that is a bet against history.
As one witness recently wrote, Iran's enduring hostility toward
us isn't ``an accident of historical inertia. ``But a choice by
Iran--a choice based upon a world view that was founded in
large measure on a fiery, theological anti-Americanism, an
officially sanctioned and officially disseminated view of
Americanism as satanism.'' That is why we are used to hearing
that rhetoric from the Ayatollah that Israel is the little
Satan and the United States is the great Satan.
So I now turn to the ranking member, Mr. Eliot Engel of New
York, for any opening comments he may have.
Mr. Engel. Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling today's
hearing. When all is said and done with the Iran deal, I don't
think anyone will accuse this committee of skimping on our due
diligence. We have heard from administration officials and
experts from across the spectrum. So thank you for your
leadership, Mr. Chairman, and thoroughness on this issue.
To our witnesses, welcome to the Foreign Affairs Committee.
I look forward to your testimony.
I certainly respect everyone's opinions, even though they
may differ from mine, but as I announced a month ago, I cannot
support the Iran nuclear deal. I have laid out the concerns
that led me to that decision, and I will quickly recap.
First of all, I am not persuaded that this deal will give
IAEA inspectors the access they need to do their jobs. Between
potentially lengthy delays and confusion over inspecting the
Parchin military base, this deal leaves too many loopholes for
the Iranians to slip through. Unfettered access for inspectors
is the only way we can be sure Iran stops its work toward a
nuclear weapon, and this deal does not provide unfettered
access.
Secondly, I believe the deal gives away too much when it
comes to sanctions on advanced conventional weapon and
ballistic missile development. As far as I knew, these issues
weren't even on the table, yet with this deal, a few years down
the road Iran could be buying advanced weapons and building
missiles and still be fully compliant with its obligations. And
even if Iran were to violate these provisions early, that
violation wouldn't trigger a snapback of economic sanctions.
Which brings me to another concern: What will Iran's
leaders do when they again have access to the billions and
billions of dollars currently frozen by international
sanctions? Even with the sanctions in place, Iran has been the
world's largest state sponsor of terrorism. When these new
resources pour into Iran, I have no doubt it will mean payday
for Hamas, Hezbollah, and other extremist groups around the
world. The intentions are pretty clear of leaders who chant
``Death to America'' and ``Death to Israel'' just days after
concluding an agreement.
And lastly and fundamentally, 15 years from now, this deal
allows Iran to produce highly enriched weapons-grade uranium
without any restriction. This deal legitimizes Iran as a
nuclear threshold state in the year 2030; gives Iran's leaders
the green light to build a stockpile of nuclear fuel. If they
pursue that course, and I believe they will, it could trigger a
nuclear arms race across the region. Even a decade-and-a-half
away, that is a risk we cannot take.
Those are my chief concerns, and that is why I can't
support this deal. But I don't think anyone here would disagree
that it is going to be very difficult to stop this deal from
being implemented. So I think it is important for us to start
considering, what are the next steps if and when this deal goes
through? What will we need to ensure the security of Israel and
our other friends and allies in the region, including the Sunni
Gulf states? What steps can be taken to prevent Iran's newfound
wealth from ending up in terrorist hands?
I know we will hear a lot today from witnesses and my
colleagues that this is not the deal we hoped for, and I agree.
I do believe this committee now has a responsibility to look
ahead and think strategically about what comes next. So I look
forward to hearing from our witnesses, Mr. Chairman. I thank
you again, and I yield back.
Chairman Royce. Thank you, Mr. Engel. And this morning----
Mr. Connolly. Would the ranking member yield before he
yields back his time?
Mr. Royce. I would be happy to yield.
Mr. Connolly. I thank the chair.
Given the fact that both the chairman and the ranking
member have talked about their concerns about the deal, just
for the record, there are a number of us who actually have a
different opinion. I believe this is a vigorous and enforceable
agreement. I believe it is the only path to peace. I believe it
rolls back the nuclear capability of Iran for a substantial
period of time that gives us time to make sure we have an even
more long-lasting agreement.
I believe it is enforceable. I believe it is verifiable. I
believe it is a robust agreement. I believe it is one we don't
need to apologize for. And the choice is stark. They are within
2 to 3 months of developing a bomb or 15 years. I choose the
latter enthusiastically.
And I thank the ranking member for his courtesy and the
chairman.
Chairman Royce. Thank you, Mr. Connolly.
This morning we are pleased to be a joined by a
distinguished panel with a range of views before the committee.
General Chuck Wald served as the former Deputy Commander of
the U.S. European Command, overseeing all U.S. forces operating
across 91 countries in Europe, Africa, Russia, parts of Asia
and the Middle East, and most of the Atlantic Ocean.
Admiral William Fallon served as the former Commander of
the U.S. Central Command, where he directed all U.S. military
operations in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Horn of
Africa.
Vice Admiral John Bird served in a variety of positions,
including as the former Commander of the Seventh Fleet and as
the Director of Navy Staff.
Mr. Leon Wieseltier is the Isaiah Berlin Senior Fellow in
Culture and Policy at the Brookings Institution. He is a senior
editor and critic at The Atlantic, for which he recently wrote
an article titled ``The Iran Deal and the Rut of History.''
And so without objection, the witnesses' full prepared
statements will be made part of the record. Members will have 5
calendar days to submit statements and questions and any
extraneous material for the record.
And, General Wald, I would ask you if you could please
summarize your remarks.
STATEMENT OF GENERAL CHUCK WALD, USAF, RETIRED (FORMER DEPUTY
COMMANDER, U.S. EUROPEAN COMMAND)
General Wald. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Engel, and members of the committee. Thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the
implications of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
I served in the Air Force as a pilot and air commander for
over three decades. I have commanded air operations in Bosnia
and Afghanistan, and I am intimately familiar with the U.S.
allies and adversaries in the Middle East, as well as the
capabilities the U.S. military uses to protect one and deter
and defeat the other.
Two weeks ago, JINSA's Gemunder Center for Defense and
Strategy released a report from its new Iran Strategy Council,
which I co-chaired, in which Vice Admiral Bird is also a
member, analyzing the Iran deal's potentially grave
repercussions. Our findings are straightforward. JCPOA does not
reduce the need for a robust military presence in the Middle
East, nor does it preclude the possibility of a military
confrontation with Iran. Instead, it creates a much more
difficult strategic environment for the United States to
operate in over the next 15 years, if not longer.
Let me explain how we came to that conclusion. First, the
deal does not prevent a nuclear Iran. It merely kicks the
centrifuge issue down the road for 15 years when the
agreement's major nuclear restrictions lapse. At that point,
according to President Obama, Iran will have advanced
centrifuges that enrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at that
point the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero.
Should Tehran decide to sprint for nuclear weapons capability,
something that it can do in weeks, if not days, U.S. options
for preventing a nuclear Iran will be extremely limited.
Second, Iran can still become a nuclear threshold power.
This does not remove the need to maintain a long-term credible
military option against Iran's nuclear program. This is why
President Obama has also cautioned that if 15 or 20 years from
now Iran tries to build a bomb, this deal ensures the United
States will have the same options available to stop weapons
programs as we have today, including, if necessary, military
options.
Third, the deal actually increases the need for the United
States to project power in the region so to protect its
interests and allies from potential Iranian interference. Vice
Admiral Bird will testify, JCPOA grants Iran access to
resources and technology with which to modernize its Armed
Forces and continue to pursue the pursuit of hegemonic and
destabilizing activities in the Middle East.
This leads to the question: If continued or increased U.S.
military presence in the Middle East will be required under
this deal, what will the strategic environment that we will be
operating look like?
I believe two main dynamics will shape the ability of the
United States military to project power and operate in the
Middle East. First, the decline in U.S. military capabilities,
in strength, force structure, readiness, and modernization,
that is already happening and will only get worse if
sequestration, the decades of cuts to the defense budget, are
allowed to continue for the remaining 6 years. Second, the
erosion of U.S. credibility in the eyes of our Middle Eastern
allies as a result of our accepting a deal that they view as
fundamentally dangerous.
Combined, these dynamics mean the United States may still
have the military option when JCPOA expires, but it will face a
far more dangerous and difficult one than it is today. In sum,
this deal creates a strategic environment in which Iran can
pursue nuclear weapons capability at a much lower level of
risk.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of General Wald follows:]
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Chairman Royce. Admiral Fallon.
STATEMENT OF ADMIRAL WILLIAM FALLON, USN, RETIRED (FORMER
COMMANDER, U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND)
Admiral Fallon. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Engel, members of
the committee, thank you for this opportunity to address this
distinguished body and offer my perspective on this nuclear
arrangement with Iran and related questions.
I think this is an important issue because Iran has
accumulated a very large quantity of enriched uranium and is,
by many accounts, near the threshold of nuclear weapons
capability. This emerging capacity, when coupled with a
virulent anti-Western rhetoric and a long record of malign
activities, presents a very real threat to U.S. interests.
Iranian bad behavior abroad, spearheaded by the IRGC Quds
Force, and executed mainly by their proxies, has fomented
regional instability and attacked U.S. personnel and interests
around the world, actions which I witnessed firsthand in
Lebanon in the early 1980s and in Iraq and Afghanistan when I
was Commander of U.S. CENTCOM in the last decade. I am under no
illusions regarding Iranian Government behavior since the
Islamic revolution, and I believe that some elements in that
country would be very pleased to posess nuclear weapons.
It is precisely this near-term potential to achieve nuclear
weapons capability that I believe presents the most serious
challenge with Iran. Notwithstanding many grievances and
intolerable activity by the Iranian agents in places around the
world, the most pressing issue for America, Israel, and our
Middle Eastern allies is the very real possibility that Iran
could soon acquire a nuclear weapon.
To address this threat, representatives of the
international community have been negotiating for many months
with one key objective: To stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear
weapon. The resulting joint plan, in my opinion, offers a good
chance to do just that and is far superior to the status quo
alternative which would leave Iran with a massive stockpile of
enriched uranium, no firsthand scrutiny of ongoing related
activities, and if this deal is rejected, new motivation to
accelerate their efforts.
I have scrutinized this agreement very carefully and I
support it with reservations and I recommend your approval of
the plan. Frankly, I was surprised but pleased that so many
diverse interests represented in the negotiations could
actually coalesce an agreement on a document that on balance I
think is a reasonable way forward.
But I want to make perfectly clear about the most important
reality: Neither we, nor the Iranians, really trust each other
to actualize the features of this deal, and that is very
important to keep in mind as we go forward.
A positive aspect of this arrangement is that after more
than 36 years of open hostility and a lack of substantive
discussion on any issue, the two sides came together and agreed
a way ahead of utmost importance. The negative is the devil in
the detail: The implementation is going to require close
scrutiny and verification. I think the most important strength
of the deal is the broad international agreement and the
priority of stopping Iran's nuclear weapons.
There are many points you can read in my testimony that I
think effectively block the uranium path to a weapon. By
sabotaging the Arak heavy water reactor, it basically sets back
the plutonium option for a substantial amount of time. There
are other issues that have been addressed variously and will be
addressed, I think, by the IAEA. You can have your own opinions
about those.
I think that the biggest weakness of the agreement is that
there doesn't appear to be any practically effective way to
monitor very small-scale Iranian misbehavior should they choose
to continue or resume it. Likewise, the full resolution of the
PMD suspicions is really unlikely because it would probably
depend on Iranian admission of past violations of the NPT and
the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement. And historically, the
IAEA has not been seen as the most aggressive entity in
pursuing scofflaws.
Regarding long-term implications of the agreement on
regional stability, I think there is good potential for
positive development. The most important issue, the imminent
threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon, has forestalled easing the
high anxiety that exists in the region and with Israel.
Suspension of sanctions will increase economic activity and
personal travel, boosting interaction with the Iranian
population, resulting in pressure to normalize state-to-state
relationships.
The potential for confidence building and maybe even trust
at some point between Iran and the international community as
implementation proceeds could initiate a more pragmatic
political dynamic inside Iran to address the very real unrest
and frustrations of the population, the majority of whom are
under 30 years of age.
Much is going to depend on Iranian behavior toward its
neighbors and whether it continues to instigate the Shia
minorities to confront Sunni leadership in the Gulf countries.
In Iraq, there is certainly some overlap in U.S. and Iranian
interests, but clearly their priority is to maintain influence
with Baghdad.
In addressing Iran's benign activities globally, we should
make sure at every opportunity that cooperation with Iran on
this comprehensive current nuclear weapons deal in no way will
excuse or cause us to ignore Iranian bad behavior in other
areas. Strengthening our ties to the GCC, encouraging
cooperative security efforts by these nations, supported by
consistent engagement by U.S. forces, should reassure these
countries of American resolve and disabuse them of any notion
that we may be aligning ourselves with Iranian interests in the
region.
The significant current disagreement between the U.S. and
Israel regarding the approach to Iran is recognized as a
difference in priority of national interest, should be
addressed with a continued strong U.S. commitment to Israeli
security.
In summary, this joint plan is a unique opportunity to
address one of the most pressing issues of international
security and stability today. The agreement has been
painstakingly negotiated in concert with allies and other
parties, and I believe offers the most reasonable and likely
way ahead to forestall an Iranian nuclear weapon for the next
decade or more. It may not satisfy every aspiration, but I have
heard no credible alternative proposal.
American initiative and persistence enabled the parties to
come to an agreement, and continued leadership will be
essential for successful implementation. I recommend
congressional support with continued engagement to enable
implementation and verification of the many complex and
critical aspects of the agreement.
Thank you, and I will be pleased to answer any specific
questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Fallon follows:]
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Chairman Royce. Thank you, Admiral.
Admiral Bird.
STATEMENT OF VICE ADMIRAL JOHN BIRD, USN, RETIRED (FORMER
COMMANDER, U.S. SEVENTH FLEET)
Admiral Bird. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Engel, members
of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear
before you today. It is an honor and a privilege to be here
joined by such distinguished and highly accomplished
professionals on this panel. My decades of service as first a
career submarine officer, and then a fleet commander of the
United States Navy afforded me the experience and expertise to
understand potential threats posed by adversaries like Iran,
especially in the maritime environment.
Along with General Wald, I am a member of the new Iran
Strategy Council, an organization of former senior U.S.
military officials sponsored by JINSA's Gemunder Center for
Defense and Strategy. As General Wald stated, we released a
report last week assessing that the JCPOA will make the United
States and its allies less secure and military confrontation
with Iran and its proxies more likely.
Specifically and fundamentally, the JCPOA will allow Iran
to become a nuclear threshold state no later than 15 years.
During that time, it will enable Iran to become more powerful
and expand its influence not only across the Middle East, and
negatively impact U.S. national security. The JCPOA's lifting
of economic sanctions will provide to Iran more resources for
military spending, while its ending of the U.N. arms embargo
will give Iran access to advanced technologies and weapons from
abroad, most likely from China and Russia.
Iran will likely use these opportunities to augment its
asymmetric capabilities to include anti-access area denial
strategy to deter or prevent our military forces from operating
effectively in the Middle East. This could include more
accurate antiship missiles, attack craft, submarines, mines,
advanced air systems, UAVs, longer-range radars, enhanced EW
and CW capabilities. In short order, Iran could credibly
threaten to seal off the Straits of Hormuz, block the flow of
oil through the Persian Gulf, and target our military forces
and those of our allies. And once sanctions end on its
ballistic missile program, Iran could more easily develop
weapons capable of reaching targets in the Middle East and
beyond, including Europe.
Additionally, the JCPOA will allow Iran to funnel more
money and weapons to destabilizing forces across the region,
from the Assad regime in Syria, to Shia militias, chiefly
Hezbollah, to expanded involvement in Yemen and other strategic
parts of the Arabian Peninsula that are vulnerable to sectarian
conflict. Therefore, the JCPOA will aggravate sectarian
conflict, trigger nuclear and conventional proliferation, and
strain ties with our regional allies.
Meanwhile, sequestration is diminishing our military's
ability to deter and respond to global threats, including
increased Iran aggression. Maintaining our position in the
Middle East to prevent a nuclear Iran will demand increasing
resources, posture, and attention, far more than is provided
today.
To Ranking Member Engel's point, now that we have the
agreement, what next?
First, we need to sustain multilateral engagement and
enhance it with our Middle East allies to assemble a regional
coalition to hold the line against Iran, built on greater
cooperation on missile defense, intelligence, and air and
maritime superiority.
Second, significant diplomatic effort must be devoted to
convincing Iran's most likely suppliers, mainly Russia and
China, not to sell Iran advanced weapons.
Third, we must develop a comprehensive national strategy to
deal with Iran's growing adversarial ambitions.
Finally, we must preserve our country's military edge
against Iran with recapitalization, investment, and
modernization of our forces.
I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for my time, and I look forward
to the committee's questions.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Bird follows:]
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Chairman Royce. Mr. Wieseltier.
STATEMENT OF MR. LEON WIESELTIER, ISAIAH BERLIN SENIOR FELLOW
IN CULTURE AND POLICY, FOREIGN POLICY AND GOVERNANCE STUDIES,
THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
Mr. Wieseltier. Thank you, Chairman Royce and Ranking
Member Engel. Thank you all to members of this committee.
Many critics more expert than myself have commented on the
technical details of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
that the Obama administration has concluded with the Islamic
Republic of Iran. In truth, it does not take an expert to
understand the shortcomings of this deal if the objective of
the deal is indeed to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear
weapon. Since this is an objective that the administration
plainly shares, its satisfaction with an arrangement that
achieves this objective only temporarily, for a short period of
time, while otherwise vindicating and legitimating Iran's
eventual ability to weaponize its nuclear knowledge and
infrastructure is difficult to understand.
From the standpoint of arms control, this deal is a
respite, not a release from our well-founded anxiety about
Iran's military ambitions. A respite is only a pause, and the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is only a pause. It is not a
reckoning with the prospect of an Iranian nuclear arsenal, it
is a postponement of such a reckoning. The Iranian regime did
not make a strategic decision to renounce nuclear weapons. It
made a tactical decision to defer nuclear weapons so as to
accomplish the strategic decision it did make, which was to
escape the crushing sanctions that were the result of its
nuclear adventurism.
We used a lot of leverage for too little. All the ominous
options must remain on the infamous table. The accord is a
change in degree, not a change in kind.
The dissatisfaction with the accord that I have just
expressed concerns only the arms control aspects of the deal.
But arms control never takes place in a political and strategic
vacuum. It cannot be insulated from history or from morality.
We recently learned this rather bitterly in Syria where the
confiscation of its dictator's arsenal of chemical weapons
turned out to have no impact whatever upon the conduct or the
outcome of this catastrophic war and its endless atrocities. In
the Syrian case, indeed, the narrow focus upon arms control was
a way to evade the larger moral and strategic challenges of the
horrors which this administration, its lofty rhetoric
notwithstanding, has adamantly refused to face. I fear that the
Iran deal is playing a similarly evasive role in the thinking
of the administration.
At least our adventure in arms control in Syria did not
alter our contempt for its regime, even if our contempt had no
practical implications for our policy. In the case of Iran,
however, the deal that we have just concluded and the spirit in
which we have just concluded it strongly suggests that this
exercise in arms control represents something more--a revision
of our troubled relationship with Iran, an attempt to establish
some sort of detente with the Islamic Republic, a lovely hope
that it can be reintegrated into the community of nations.
The President has both confirmed and denied such an
interpretation of the accord in keeping with his tactical needs
of the moment. But it is hard not to intuit in this deal the
hand that he extended to the Islamic Republic as long ago as
his first inaugural address. For this reason, it is important
that the deal be analyzed, not only as arms control, but also
as foreign policy. And it disappoints me as foreign policy even
more than it disappoints me as arms control.
It is not always the case that conflict is the result of a
misunderstanding or a mistake. Sometimes conflict is a sign
that differences have been properly understood. The troubled
relationship of the United States with Iran should be troubled.
Our previous hostility to the Islamic Republic was not based on
a misreading of the Islamic Republic in its conduct within its
borders or beyond it borders.
When one speaks about an unfree country, when one says the
word ``Iran,'' for example, one may be referring either to its
government or to its people, but one may not be referring to
both because they are not on the same side. An expression of
friendship toward a dictatorship is an expression of enmity or
indifference toward its people.
The President, when he speaks about Iran, likes to believe
that he is speaking about its people, but in practice it is the
regime to whom his hand has been warmly extended. The text of
the accord states that we will submit a resolution to the
Security Council ``expressing a desire to build a new
relationship with Iran,'' not a new relationship with a new
Iran, but a new relationship with this Iran, with a criminal,
oppressive, theocratic, belligerent, corrupt, anti-American,
anti-Semitic, misogynistic, and homophobic regime that is
consecrated no only to its God, but also to thwarting American
allies and interests and principles everywhere and
remorselessly sponsoring terrorism.
What democrat, what pluralist, what liberal, what
conservative, what believer, what nonbeliever, what American
would want this Iran for a friend? What constructive role can
this Iran--yes, I know it is opposed to ISIS--play in the
community of nations? And what constructive role can it play
toward its own people? When the sanctions are lifted and Iran
is economically rewarded for limited and passing concessions on
its enrichment program, it will, of course, use some of the
windfall to intensify its mischief abroad, about which more in
a moment, and it will use the rest of its windfall to
strengthen its economy. But we have no reason to think that
opening up an economy has the effect of opening up a society.
There is a great deal of saddening but serious evidence
that economic liberalization need not entail political
liberalization. We hear a lot about a contest in Tehran between
hardliners and moderates, as we have in previous periods of
wishful thinking about Iran, but it is important to remember
that political conflict in Iran takes place within an
absolutist structure of power in which supreme authority rests
with a single individual who rules by divine sanction. If the
Ayatollah and the IRGC have not opened up their society, it is
not because they lack the cash.
Consider also the Iranian regime's foreign policy. During
the period of our negotiations with Iran, Iran was intervening
furiously to inflame the Shia in Iraq, to prop up Bashar al-
Assad in Syria, to support Hezbollah in Lebanon, and to arm
Hamas in Gaza. Its regional aggressions, which were directed at
American interests and American allies, were uninhibited by a
fear of offending the United States during a delicate
negotiation about an issue of the highest importance.
We, by contrast, inhibited ourselves in all these places.
We stayed our hands for many reasons, but one of them was a
worry about damaging our nuclear diplomacy with Iran. The
lessons of the 1970s and 1980s, when the United States had the
wisdom and the courage to press the Soviet Union all at once
about arms control and human rights and proxy wars, were lost
on our President.
And there is also the question, or rather the cause, of
Israel. The Islamic Republic's ceaseless calls for the
extermination of the Jewish state must not be treated as some
sort of foible or eccentricity that makes us sigh as we get on
with the really important business. It should disgust us as a
Nation and our disgust should take the form of policy.
Whatever one thinks of Israel's methods in intervening in
the American debates, or of its actions and inactions toward
the Palestinians, it would be indecent not to understand
Israel's anguish at the prospect of the nuclearization of a
state that arms its enemies and is eager for its destruction.
From the standpoint of foreign policy then, the nuclear
accord disturbs me because it will almost certainly invigorate
a contemptible and bellicose regime. And so I propose that in
the aftermath of the accord we proceed to do whatever we can to
weaken that regime. The adoption of the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action should be accompanied by a resumption of our
hostility to the Iranian regime and its various forces.
The suggestion is not as paradoxical as it sounds.
Diplomats like to say that you talk with your enemies. They are
right, and we have talked with them, but they are still our
enemies. We need to restore democratization to its pride of
place among the priorities of our foreign policy and to oppress
the theocrats in Tehran everywhere with expressions in word and
deed of our implacable opposition to their war on their own
people.
We need to support Iranian dissidents in any way we can,
not least so that they do not feel abandoned and alone, and we
must indefatigably demand the release of Moussavi and Kairoubi
from the house arrest in which they have been sealed since the
regime's crackdown on the democratic rebellion of 2009, on
which our Government turned its back. And how, in good
conscience, could we have proceeded with these negotiations
while an innocent American journalist was held captive in an
Iranian jail?
We need to despise the Iranian regime loudly and regularly
and damage its international position as fiercely as we can for
its desire to destroy Israel. We need to degrade by sanctions
and other means the more dangerous elements of Iran's
conventional arsenal. And we need to arm the enemies of Iran in
Syria and Iraq and therefore offer a consequential obstacle to
Iran's plain-as-day campaign to attain regional hegemony.
But even as I say these word, my heart sinks, because I
know that that administration will not accept such activist
prescriptions. And yet, it is not just the Obama administration
that has preferred a diminution of America's presence in the
world when it comes to asserting American power as a force for
security and justice, of recognizing the legitimacy and the
necessity of American interventions against evils that offend
our interests and our values--and of recognizing too that there
are many courses of action that fall between Obama's lassitude
and Bush's shock and awe--when it comes to articulating a right
and fierce sense of America's responsibility in the world,
neither Democrats, nor Republicans have exactly covered
themselves in glory in recent years.
The adoption of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
would be an appropriate occasion for opening a new discussion
of the first principles of our foreign policy. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wieseltier follows:]
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Chairman Royce. Thank you, Mr. Wieseltier. I have a
question for you, and it goes to this issue of looking back in
time at what has worked.
You are right in terms of the difficulty in finding an
effective approach to changing these types of totalitarian
regimes. But in the 1980s, I was part of an exchange program
that was partly in Eastern Europe, and I watched the
combination of strategy, bringing down the price of oil then to
$10 a barrel, the focus on what could be done in terms of
broadcasting with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which was
much, much different. I mean it was a lesson plan in political
tolerance, in political pluralism. It was taking a society that
was two to one opposed to the totalitarian regime and
ratcheting it up until it was three to one or four to one in
opposition.
What is interesting to me is that for the last generation
in Iran, people have been two to one against the theocracy. The
last Gallup Poll I saw, when they asked the question, ``What
type of system do you want?'' they said, ``A Western-style
democracy without a theocracy.'' That was the will of two-
thirds of the people.
Now, when you have a theocracy, when you have a
totalitarian regime, that is not enough to get you there, from
our experience with Eastern Europe, but if you ratchet that up,
you can get there. And I think the frustration for many of us
was the failure to deploy. I mean, now it is dysfunctional,
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, that is dysfunctional. Support
for the opposition, nonexistent. In 2009, when the students
were protesting, they did not feel that the United States was
on their side in that debate, nor was the broadcasting on their
side during that debate, or on social media on their side
during that debate.
So the question for me would go to your observation, you
know, the parallel with the Dreyfus affair, when you say you
learned that there are times when an injustice to only one man
deserves to bring things to a halt. In Iran today, there is an
injustice, not just to those being held in Evin Prison, not
just to the American you speak to, but to a whole society. How
do we empower that society? I don't think it is with this
agreement, because I think this agreement, in fact, empowers
the IRGC and the Ayatollah. But how do we empower those people?
Mr. Wieseltier. Let me say four quick points about that.
Thank you for your remarks.
The first one is this. If it is indeed the case, as the
defenders of the deal say, that it is in the rational interest
of the Iranian Government to renounce nuclear weapons, and if
it is indeed the case that the Iranian regime is the rational
actor that those defenders describe, and if it is indeed the
case that the Iranian regime would like to be reintroduced into
the so-called community of nations, then we set our goals too
modestly; then we set our goals too modestly. We had certain
prior assumptions about Iranian flexibility, and it is not at
all clear to me that they were ipso facto true. And those
assumptions were based on a whole variety of things having to
do with the administration's larger views about foreign policy
and America's role in the world that we can talk about at
another time or later.
Secondly, it is very important to remember that
democratization is not an event, it is an era. It takes a very
long time. It took a long time in Central and Eastern Europe
under communism. It took a long time. One of the mistakes or
illusions created by the Iraq war was that we can simply send
in a bunch of troops, you know, fly our Air Force, and we would
have a parliamentary system overnight. That is not how a
society living in tyranny and repression becomes free. And when
you emancipate people, when you make them free, you emancipate
the actually existing people, and those are people who have not
had experience of democracy. So we must keep our heads and
regard this as a policy for the long term.
Thirdly, there are many instruments available to the United
States in the support of democrats and dissidents everywhere.
This debate, not in this room right now, but generally the
Iranian nuclear debate, the administration's approach to this,
has been a terribly Manichaean picture in which it is either
this particular deal or a catastrophic war. The United States
is the greatest power in the world with a vast variety of
instruments that it can deploy at all levels, soft power, soft
versions of hard power, and even hard versions of hard power.
But, you know, we are not helpless in this.
And fourth, it is very important to understand that when I
say that we must support dissidents and democrats in countries,
when I talk about democratization, I mean that we must support
the forces where they already exist indigenously. One of the
problems with our Iraq strategy was that we went in to topple a
dictator who, God knows, was illegitimate and dangerous and had
used chemical weapons against his people, whatever one thinks
about that war. But we did not go in to support an indigenous
force. In Syria, there was an indigenous force. I fear it may
have been wiped out. The administration may have actually have
fulfilled--its inaction may have fulfilled its worst
prophecies.
In Iran, Iran is, of all of the examples, Iran is a state,
a tyrannical state with a social basis for an open society if
ever there was one. And there is a robust community of
democrats and dissidents in Iran that the United States, I
think, has not only a moral obligation to support, but also an
intensely strategic obligation to support, because I can think
of no greater prize, geopolitically, in the region and beyond,
than a change of regime in Tehran.
Chairman Royce. Thank you Mr. Wieseltier.
My time has expired. We are going to Mr. Eliot Engel of New
York.
Mr. Engel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In my opening remarks, I mentioned that one of the things
that troubled me about this agreement was the fact that the new
U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, which accompanies the
JPOA, lifts the arms embargo on Iran after 5 years and
ballistic missile sanctions after 8 years. So I would like to
ask Admiral Fallon, what are the strategic implications of
lifting these particular sanctions, and are there redundant
measures in place that the United States can rely on that will
prevent Iran from introducing further instability into the
region?
Admiral Fallon. Mr. Engel, who knows? We could speculate
all day long. There has been an awful lot of that about every
aspect of this deal.
In my view, the most important thing is that Iran is very
close, by pretty much consensus, to achieving a nuclear weapon.
If they do that, I guess step back for a second and put this in
perspective. There is no comparison in total power between Iran
and the United States. They are not in the same league with us.
However, they acquire a nuclear weapon, it gives them
significant leverage to blackmail us and others against doing
things in this region or other places that could be
destabilizing.
So it seems to me that you stack the priorities in what we
would like to do here, keep the weapon out of their hands now
is, in my view, far superior to the others, and that is what
the objective is here. So there are all kinds of other things.
If I had a clean sheet and could have all my desires, we
wouldn't have included any release of ballistic missile
technology or access to other weapons and a long list of things
that, from our perspective, we would like to see implemented.
That is not realistic, absolutely not realistic, in my opinion.
So what we are trying to do is to forestall the imminent
potential of a nuclear weapon. There are only two ways to get
there by my understanding of the physics. One is through
uranium. We have removed, if this plan is agreed to and
executed, removed that pile of uranium, enriched uranium. And
the second is plutonium. And if the plant is not functioning,
it is not very easy or likely they are going to build another
heavy water plant any time soon.
So to me, when you look at the alternatives, give me a real
one. I have heard a lot of talk. Most of it is speculation and
handwringing about what could happen. Who knows what could
happen? But think of a couple things, if you would please,
Members. Fifteen years, that is almost a generation, and that
is basically what the deal is trying to buy, pushing this off
that amount of time.
The flip side, I don't know of many people that are
particularly thrilled with the leadership in Tehran. I
certainly have no love for them whatsoever based on observed
behavior up front and personal. But 15 years from now, Khamenei
is going to be, if he is alive, 91. Do you think he is going to
be ruling that country? This is a country where 50 percent of
the population is under the age of 30. And you can feel it from
here, they want change.
So who knows what is going to happen? I think we could
speculate all day long. It seems to me that we ought to be
focused on the most important thing, and that is let's stop the
drive to a nuclear weapon now.
Mr. Engel. And if anyone else cares to answer, it would
seem to me, though, if we are looking to help the Iranian
people have a more democratic regime, are we more likely to do
it when Iran is awash in cash as this agreement will do, or are
we more likely to have it if the Iranian economy, currency, and
other things are struggling because they have a hold on moneys
that they have?
Vice Admiral, General, Leon?
Admiral Fallon. Would you like me to take a shot at that
first?
Mr. Engel. Sure.
Admiral Fallon. So the amount of money has also been
debated, who knows, $50 billion or $100 billion, but in the big
scheme of things, Iran seems to have done a pretty fair job of
funding their ongoing activities around the world that we find
pretty nefarious. So I am not sure what this infusion of cash
might result in, but I know one thing, it is almost certain,
and that is if this place opens up and you get the kind of
economic activity that appears to be poised to--I mean, try to
get a flight into Tehran from some European capital today--this
country is going to open up.
What that means for the future remains to be seen. But the
idea that it is going to stay a closed society I don't think is
going to happen. So this offer is an opportunity to change
that.
Mr. Engel. Leon.
Mr. Wieseltier. I just wanted to make a remark about this
notion that one hears everywhere now that one must support the
deal because there is no alternative. I never quite understood
this, this point. In the first place, if a plan does not
furnish a solution to the problem that it sets out to solve,
then it is itself not a real alternative and not a satisfactory
alternative. The debate is about whether or not it does. But
the idea that because it is the only plan there is we must
support it makes no sense to me if we come honestly to the
conclusion that it is a bad plan.
And secondly, the idea that the argument that there is no
alternative, I mean this deal is a respite of 10 years and 15
years, and we are told there is no alternative. But the same
could have been said about a respite of 7 years and 12 years,
or 3 years and 8 years, or 6 months and a year. The idea that
there is no alternative could be used to justify any deal.
I think that the most important--the obligation we have is
to judge the deal on its own merits, considering all its
dimensions. And if we conclude that it is a bad deal, then I
think people have to vote on their conscience about it.
Mr. Engel. I see my time is up, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Chairman Royce. Thank you Mr. Engel.
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman and the
ranking member.
I want to follow up on the excellent points that they had
made. We have heard from some of our witnesses today that as a
result of this influx of sanctions relief cash, which Mr. Engel
was talking about, and strengthening the economy, that Iran
will being more powerful and more militarily capable. Of
course, this also means that Iran will have more money to
support terror and its proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas.
If Iran right now and up to now has found the money even
under these tightest of sanctions to fund its support for
terror, do you believe that this influx, this new influx of
funds will really go to help the domestic economy like the
administration has been portraying?
And furthermore, how can an emboldened Iranian military
undermine our interests in the Gulf and in the Strait of
Hormuz?
We have also heard that as a result of this deal, we will
have to increase cooperation with our partners in the region
militarily. And how would we do that? Through increased arm
sales. But this can prove to be quite problematic. Is it
possible that allowing Iran's military capability to build up
and by us simultaneously arming Gulf countries in the region to
the teeth, could this actually lead to another war and also
make it more difficult for the U.S. to be able to respond? And
how is it in our national interest in the region to have a
conventional arms race and a nuclear arms race now that these
countries have seen us allow Iran to keep its capability to
enrich uranium? And how would this arms buildup threaten
Israel's security and Israel's qualitative military edge?
And I agree with you, sir, when the administration is
calling those of us who oppose this deal, which is a bipartisan
majority of Congress and the American public, warmongers, yet
if this deal goes through, the United States will be
responsible for the mass proliferation of conventional and
nuclear weapons in the region. Lots of questions.
General.
General Wald. I will answer that.
First of all, I think your points are excellent. I would
like to just make a personal comment. I don't think there would
be anything better for us today in this world if we could
ensure Iran didn't have a nuclear weapon. I don't like that
idea at all.
The concern I have about the deal is that we haven't talked
about the after the deal what we are going to do. And the idea
that Iran now is going to have $100 billion, $50 billion, I
don't care, $50 billion is a lot, a lot more than they have
now, to modernize their capability--and they will--is
bothersome to me as a military person.
Number two is, I think the idea that this deal is going to
preclude war, I don't think the deal or not a deal is going to
preclude war. I think it is a matter of how Iran acts. And they
have demonstrated the desire to cause problems in the Middle
East. This issue with Hezbollah that the ranking member brought
up is not trivial. We have heard it is 100,000 missiles that
are pointed at Israel.
Number two is, modernizing their intercontinental ballistic
missile or regional missile capability is going to be hugely
problematic for not just the GCC states, but the United States
as a partner.
Verification. I don't know how we are going to really
ensure that we have a good verification regime with the way the
wording of the agreement has been stated. The fact that they
are going to have 24 days to do whatever they want, the fact we
can't go to their military facilities. I mean, we are going to
need a strong verification regime that we do not have, and we
should ensure that before we do this. And, again, you can say
what you want to. Colin Powell was on TV Sunday talking about
the Iraq invasion based on intelligence. We didn't have a clue
what Iraq had at that point. And we were putting a lot of
effort into it. And you don't think we have put a lot of effort
into Iran? We don't have an idea for sure what they are doing.
And they will cheat. They will cheat. There is no doubt about
it.
Number three is, I think we need to continue to increase,
as you pointed out, our support to our allies in the region,
the GCC states, and we need to expect them to have us be
participatory in a regional missile defense regime with them,
not just part time, full time.
Israel. We need to beef up Israel's air defense capability.
They shouldn't have four or five Iron Domes. They ought to have
30 Iron Domes. And the fact of the matter, unless Iran is
deterred, unless Iran is deterred, they are going to cause
havoc in the region. They don't just want to be a nuclear
power, they want to be a regional hegemon. Having them get $100
billion to modernize their capability is a bad idea.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, sir. I agree.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member.
Chairman Royce. Thank you.
We now go to Mr. Brad Sherman of California.
Mr. Sherman. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, a lot of discussion, is this a good deal, is
this a bad deal? It is not our job here to grade the President
of the United States or his predecessors. That is the job of
talk show hosts, pundits, ultimately historians. Our job here
is to guide the House of Representatives, how can the House
make a positive contribution to this Nation's foreign policy
under today's conditions? Not the conditions that existed a
month ago or a year ago.
A month ago when we left Washington some believed that the
House and the Senate might immediately affect our foreign
policy under the Corker bill by passing a binding resolution of
disapproval over the President's veto and preventing the
President from delivering some portion of the sanctions relief
promised in Vienna. Whether that was ever in the cards then, we
know it is not in the cards now. The House cannot prevent the
President from delivering the sanctions relief called for by
the agreement. Thirty-four Senators, with seven to spare, have
already announced their position.
Now, we might want to live in a fantasy world. In my
fantasy world the Ayatollah is about to convert to
Christianity. In the fantasy world of others, a joint
resolution of disapproval is about to be passed over the
President's veto by both Houses by a two-thirds majority. We
are not here to live in a fantasy world.
What are the points we can all agree on? Believe it or not,
there are points, and this has been a contentious debate, we
can all agree on.
First, as I have pointed out, this deal is going to go into
effect for the next year and a half. Whether it goes through
after a veto or before a veto, the world will not remember for
very long.
The second thing we can all agree on is that the nuclear
safeguards in this deal are much better in this decade than
they are next decade. We know what America's foreign policy
will be until 2017. We do not know what is in our national
interest in 2017 or 2027. As Admiral Fallon said, there is just
no way to know.
So the greatest contribution this House can make is to
preserve America's freedom of action dealing with circumstances
we cannot predict. Even if you love this deal, the greatest
proponents don't say there is a guarantee that it represents
our best national interests next decade. And even if you hate
this deal, you do not know what will be in our national
interest next decade. What we need is freedom of action.
The threat to our freedom of action is that we are the good
guys. We follow international law. If something is binding, we
feel bound. The House can make one contribution, and that is to
demonstrate to the American people and the world that this is
not a binding agreement. Now, that has the additional advantage
of being true. It is not binding on America under the United
States Constitution. And in the Vienna Convention on the Law of
Treaties, this is the lowest possible executive handshake. It
is not a ratified treaty, it is not an unratified treaty, it is
not an executive legislative agreement.
So we have got to have the clearest possible message that
this agreement is not binding on the President and not binding
on Congress.
We are scheduled to deal with a resolution of disapproval,
which as I pointed out will not, even if it passes, and that is
problematic. In the Senate it will be vetoed. Ultimately it
will be defeated, maybe only by 34 percent of one house, but it
will be defeated.
There are three other approaches we could take that would
make a clearer statement. We could have a concurrent resolution
of disapproval that doesn't go to the President's desk, we
could have a House resolution of disapproval that doesn't even
go to the Senate, or we could vote on, as provided in the
Corker bill, on a resolution of approval and it would be voted
down. Those would be clearer statements than where we are
headed now, which is ultimately a victory for the proponents of
the deal.
But I don't run the House. None of us on this side of this
aisle run the House. We will vote on those matters that are
brought to the floor, and we have got to vote in a way that
preserves freedom of action. The President has the freedom of
action for the rest of his term. That is guaranteed by the
votes in the Senate. Now we have to preserve freedom of action
for future Presidents under future circumstances.
I yield back.
Chairman Royce. We go now to Joe Wilson of South Carolina.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, Mr. Chairman, I
want to thank you, I want to thank the ranking member Eliot
Engel, the courage that you have had over the last month as the
American people find out more about this deal, they find out
how dangerous it is.
The thought that there would be self-inspection, it is
inconceivable, of putting the American people at risk, putting
the Middle East at risk, putting our military at risk. I have
four sons currently serving in the military today, so I take it
personally that indeed our American military is put at risk by
working with a country that provided the IEDs that killed so
many of our troops.
And how we can forget 1983, the attack on the Marine
barracks in Beirut, which was a direct attack by Iran killing
nearly 300 marines. And people should know that that bomb
explosion was the largest explosive device since Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.
And then just 3 years ago this regime, a murderous regime,
was attempting to blow up and kill the Ambassador from Saudi
Arabia to the United States.
And so for us to be dealing with Islamofascists as if they
are trustworthy is utterly inconceivable.
There has been one highlight to me, though, of this debate.
Right here I had an opportunity to be here with Senator Joseph
Lieberman. This is bipartisan. He expressed a heartfelt belief
that the deal should be defeated and that it should be
overridden. And I had the opportunity to be with him in New
York.
And so as I think back to where we are. And, General Wald,
a concern that I have is that with the lifting of the military
sanctions, in addition to unfrozen funds, estimated, let's take
the numbers, can you imagine, $50 billion, $100 billion, $150
billion? That is a lot of money. What will this do for Iran's
well-documented support of terrorism and destabilization across
the globe? Could you please speak to these concerns and what
impact this will have on the overall security chaos that is
currently in the Middle East? And how does this affect American
families at home?
General Wald. Thank you. I go back again, I agree with your
comments. I think from my perspective as a military person who
spent a lot of time in the Middle East, I was in charge at the
beginning of the Afghan war that I thought was pretty
successful. I have been to the Middle East 45 times. I have
close friends there. I have been to Israel 40 times.
My concern about the deal is that I don't believe we have a
strong verification process, and that worries me. And if we
don't have a strong verification process, something that isn't
necessarily even that much greater than we have today, that is
not a good thing.
On the other side, for that ability, for Iran to have this
lifting of the sanctions, they are going to have the money to,
as you point out, modernize their military. Their military has
been problematic for us anyway over the last 30 years. I mean,
back in the 1990s we had a reflagging of friendly shipping
through the region called Earnest Will. The United States Navy
escorted every ship through the Straits of Hormuz because of
the threat of the Iranian missiles, the scuds from Bandar
Abbas.
They don't have the ability to actually threaten our air
today because they haven't had the ability to modernize their
air capability. They don't have surface-to-air missiles that
are worth a darn. With this money they are going to have
released, they will be able to modernize their air defense, as
Admiral Bird mentioned, their anti-access, they will be able to
modernize their air force, they will be able to modernize their
missile capability. I will guarantee you that they are not
going to sit idle in the Persian Gulf.
And the irony is we are actually putting ourselves in a
more difficult position militarily by allowing themselves to
modernize. We don't have a verification regime that I think
would pay that off. So that is my concern.
Mr. Wilson. And I also am very, very concerned, Admiral
Bird, it is my understanding that the funding for Hezbollah
with the missile capability, the rocket capability to strike
Israel, that it is currently being funded at $200 million a
year. So if you have $50 billion what would be the consequence?
Admiral Bird. Thank you, Mr. Wilson. And I agree with what
General Wald said.
As Admiral Fallon and other members have pointed out, we
are very unsure as to what Iran might do and what the breakout
period is with respect to nuclear weapons. What we are not
unsure about is what they intend to do with additional
resources. They have more or less announced that they see this
deal very narrowly, only dealing with their nuclear
infrastructure. My sense is it is a delay of game until they
ultimately get a nuclear weapon.
What it is not a delay of is the money they will fund
toward Hezbollah, to their military capabilities. And given a
total expense of $16 billion for their military defense, any
infusion of capital to the tune of $50 billion or $100 billion
would be dramatic.
At the same time, the technology associated with ballistic
missiles, asymmetric threats that I spoke of, is increasing
somewhat organically to Iran, but certainly on the export
market. So there is no doubt that Iran would get greater access
to arms, ballistic missiles, submarines, attack aircraft, and
the like, and funnel it to Hezbollah, as well as to their
mainstream navy and Armed Forces, and be very problematic for
the United States Navy, for the United States military in the
Gulf.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much.
Chairman Royce. Mr. Albio Sires of New Jersey.
Mr. Sires. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
holding this hearing.
And thank you for being here.
I want all those people that are very concerned about the
time, the 10 or 15 years, as I look at this region, a region
with thousands of years of history, they have seen countries
come and go, and I look at these hardliners in Iran, and they
are saying: Well, this deal may go, but we are going to be here
after this deal is done. And I can just see them positioning
themselves when this is gone.
When you spoke about the Ayatollah in 10, 15 years he is
going to be 90, 91 years old, well there is a succession, and
all these countries have it. I look at China hardliners. There
is a succession there. I look at some of these other countries,
Vietnam. There is a succession there. I look at my own country
where I was born, Cuba, there is a succession there. So to me
10, 15 years is the blink of an eye in a part of the world that
has been around for thousands of years.
And furthermore, I really do think that all these other
countries around that do not trust Iran, there is going to be a
nuclear arms race, or there is going to be an effort, because
they do not trust Iran that eventually they are not going to
develop a bomb. And they have a history of not trusting each
other.
So to me, I don't get it. And I hate the fact that when I
say I have these concerns, people somehow label me as a
warmonger. I mean, is most of America a warmongering country?
So do you anticipate that this is going to lead to an arms
race, Mr. Wieseltier?
Mr. Wieseltier. I think that, you know, in life time is a
very strange thing. Some things feel long and some things feel
short. I think that 15 years is a young person's idea of a long
time. I mean, I think it is no time at all.
Moreover, I think that the burden of proof about the nature
of the future character of the Iranian regime and the future
behavior of the Iranian regime falls on those who believe for
some reason that it is going to change and moderate itself. And
I see no reason.
I think this regime is intently committed to its own
preservation. It believes, as I said, that it--it actually
believes that it rules by divine sanction. I believe that the
Revolutionary Guards, which as someone noted are intimately
involved and corrupt a great part of the Iranian economy, is
also intently committed to its own fascistic control over large
sectors of Iranian society.
These are not actors that will move aside voluntarily or
who will one day read Jefferson and Madison and come to their
senses. That is not how it is going to happen. The only way it
will happen is because Iranian society is full of many good,
liberal-leaning--"liberal'' in the larger term--Western-
leaning, democratizing people. There is, as I said, a social
basis for a new regime in Tehran. A new regime in Tehran is not
something that the United States can or should bring about on
its own, but it is something that if there is movement within
the Iranian people, within the country of Iran, it is something
that I believe American foreign policy must make it one of its
priorities to support.
We have to keep our heads here. It is going to take a
while. But there were people for a very long time who told us
that the Soviet Union was immortal, it would not fall. And
indeed it did fall, not because we brought it down, but because
we helped.
Mr. Sires. But it took a long time.
Mr. Wieseltier. There is no way around this. There is no
fast forwarding----
Mr. Sires. No, I agree with you.
Mr. Wieseltier [continuing]. There is no fast forwarding
history. What worries me about this deal and about certain
other aspect of the Obama administration is that we have gone
backwards in this regard and not forward.
Mr. Sires. Thank you.
I just want to ask, how do you justify the fact that most
of the country does not agree with this deal.
Admiral Fallon. Well, the first thing is we have all kinds
of attributional statements that I have heard here today and in
the media that I think have little basis in fact. They are
opinions. Everybody has an opinion.
If I could go back to Leon on one thing, just so you don't
characterize me in the no alternative group, we have lots of
alternatives. My issue is show me one that actually might
achieve something that this thing looks like it has got a
pretty good chance to do.
I would invite us to step back from this a little bit and
look at the bigger picture. This plan is just what it is, a
plan, it is long, 149 pages, whatever it is. This is not the
end of the world. This is not a ship casting off and going to
sea never to be seen again. This is just a step in a process.
And as someone who ground his teeth and shed more than a few
tears at my people who were killed as a direct result of
Iranian actions in Lebanon, in Iraq, this is not some abstract
nonsense.
But at some point in time, we have got to, in my view, look
at the bigger picture. And the bigger picture is this region,
the Middle East, is very unstable, it is very insecure. And the
thing that appears to instigate the most instability is the
hammering concern about Iranian nuclear weapons.
And so I invite you to look at the technical aspects of
this thing. It is going to be very difficult to continue a
uranium enrichment program or plutonium. How are they going to
get the bomb over us? Is it going to drop out of the sky? Yeah,
they could. I mean, you could speculate all kinds of things.
They could get one from Pakistan.
But I think the bigger issue here is we need to focus on
the most immediate thing and recognize that it is going to be a
many-step evolution. The implementation of this thing is really
hard. You think this is hard? In my view, start working through
the details of the implementation. And this is where the
Congress, in my opinion, can really help.
So at some point in time in every dispute, it seems to me,
if you are going to make progress, you have got to suck it up
and say, you know, I don't like this. So the comment that
Congressman Wilson made, have we forgotten the Marine barracks?
I sure haven't. I was there.
Chairman Royce. Time has expired.
We are going to Mr. Darrell Issa of California.
Mr. Issa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Wald. May I make a real quick comment on that last
point real quick before we leave it?
I think it is ironic that Admiral Fallon, who is a friend
of mine, would say that the biggest issue here is this
instability in the Middle East, and the nuclear weapon is an
issue but that other parts of it are even more important. And
in fact this deal is going to give Iran the ability to make the
Middle East a lot more unstable. And it is ironic to me that
everybody that says if you don't like the deal you are a
warmonger, you want to blow up Iran, I would like to avoid any
conflict. But I will guarantee you, Iran with the money they
are going to get from the sanctions lifting, is going to change
the dynamic in the Middle East significantly.
And I will tell you another thing, and Congressman Royce
know this. Robert Mugabe, we keep saying he is going to die any
day. He is going to live forever. I mean, the idea you are
going to wait until somebody dies to change some kind of policy
is not a very good way to go.
Chairman Royce. We have got to go to Mr. Darrell Issa of
California. I am sure we will come back to some of these
arguments.
Mr. Issa. Thank you Mr. Chairman. I have lived to ask my
questions.
How many of you on the panel know or have visited the
Trinity site in New Mexico? Okay. So for those who haven't
visited it, that was the first successful nuclear explosion,
occurred in July 1945.
How many of you know how many years after we began the
Manhattan Project that bomb went off? Well, August 13, we just
had the 73rd anniversary. It was less than 3 years at a time
when computers mostly ticked, because relays were clicking,
that it took us only 3 years to produce a nuclear weapon. That
concerns me every bit as much as 37 years of ayatollah after
ayatollah murdering Americans and our allies around the world
and spreading terrorism.
So I want to ask just a couple of questions. And, Admiral
Fallon, you generals and admirals are all friends up there, but
I consider you a friend, but today I have got to ask you some
tough questions. So I will put it this way, Bill: Have you read
all the side agreements?
Admiral Fallon. I am not sure what you mean by side
agreements.
Mr. Issa. Well, the agreements that are not part of the
deal that is being presented to Congress.
Admiral Fallon. If you are getting at the two so-called
secret protocols----
Mr. Issa. Yes, sir.
Admiral Fallon [continuing]. I guess, no I haven't read
them.
Mr. Issa. So can any of us make a fully educated
understanding of this deal without knowing the deal in its
entirety? I am not saying that every part of it is something
that Congress has to oversee, but whether it is the IAEA or any
other side agreements that are there, if we are going to
approve what is effectively a treaty, why is it that anyone can
reach a conclusion if we haven't seen the entire deal? And I
will ask each of you that question.
Admiral Fallon. Okay. First, if I could comment, it is not
a treaty----
Mr. Issa. It is effectively a treaty.
Admiral Fallon. It is not a treaty.
Mr. Issa. Okay. Let's put it this way. It effectively
changes our role in a way in which we treat an absolute enemy
of this state who still occupies our Embassy in Tehran with its
foreign students and Revolutionary Guard types, they still
occupy that illegally as we speak today. They are still a
terrorist state. They are still a state that doesn't recognize
international law. And we now are going to allow them 5 years
from now to get ICBMs. So the answer to your question that you
asked rhetorically is, how are they going to drop the bomb?
Well, in 5 years they are going to drop the bomb with an ICBM
they are fully allowed to buy.
Admiral Fallon. Well, I would be very much more concerned
about the coercive effect in the next year or 2 years. But back
to your original question, this Additional Protocol, I don't
know what the exact language is, but I think what is noteworthy
about it is that this is a voluntary expansion, as I understand
it, of Iran agreeing to allow the IAEA to look at things that
heretofore had not been looked at.
It might be noteworthy that this is not a typical thing,
and there is a separate agreement on Parchin, that is the
second part of it. And why would we be interested? Why the
IAEA? You know why, because of bad behavior in the past.
Mr. Issa. Okay. Let me switch my question----
Admiral Fallon. Nobody has agreed to it before. This is the
first time----
Mr. Issa. First of all my understanding is all they are
agreeing to do is what they already agreed to do by protocol
for years and refused to do. The sites they are prohibiting are
sites they have prohibited in violation of agreements they
already signed.
But let me just ask the fundamental question, and I was in
the Sinai over the break, I saw the Boko Haram problem in
Nigeria. These are areas outside of what we talk about every
day, but they are part of the spreading Islamic activities on
both the Sunni and Shia side that are beginning to dominate
more and more of the world.
So seeing all of that, I only ask one question: Why should
Congress agree to any deal that allows one of the major
protagonists to have $140 billion more that is clearly going to
be used to spread their agenda, their Shia caliphate, in
opposition to a Sunni caliphate, in opposition to the Western
world agreement to let people live in peace, including the
Christians in the Arab and Muslim world?
I will just go down the line. General Wald.
General Wald. We shouldn't. Period.
Admiral Fallon. The answer to that one is that we have had
36 years of zippo except head butting. At some point in time it
is in our national interest to try to do something to stabilize
this region. We don't like these guys, they don't like us, we
don't trust them. What else is new? But at some point in time,
we have got to actually take a step forward----
Mr. Issa. I want to quickly just get through the other two.
Where do you stand on this, Admiral?
Admiral Bird. We should not.
Mr. Wieseltier. My own view is that whereas one should take
risks for peace, one shouldn't be played for a fool. And I
worry that we are being played for fools here because the
windfall of this money. I mean, these are matters of history.
We know what the Iranian regime believes in. We know how it has
behaved beyond its borders. I see absolutely no reason to
believe that this windfall will not impact its adventures
beyond its borders.
Mr. Issa. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Royce. Thank you, Mr. Issa.
So we go now to Mr. Ted Deutch of Florida.
Mr. Deutch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral Fallon, I just wanted to follow up on that last
exchange. When you said that at some point we have to try to do
something to stabilize the region, it seems to me there is just
not a response to the very real concern that I think critics
and supporters of the deal acknowledge, that money flowing to
this regime, some portion of it is going to go to Hezbollah and
Hamas and other terrorist groups. They will use that to further
destabilize the regime.
And so we can have a debate about what happens at the end
of this deal, and I agree with Mr. Wieseltier that this is
really just a pause, but that is a separate issue. In the short
term, the money, the lifting of the arms embargo, the ability
to conduct ballistic missile research, all of that will make
the region I think less secure. It will destabilize the region,
number one.
And number two, from an arms control perspective, for all
of us who really are concerned about nuclear proliferation, I
fail to understand how once this deal goes forward, how it is
that if the Saudis or Turkey or Egypt come to us, come to the
United States and say, ``You know what, we just want that, we
will take the Iran deal, we will take all of the limitations,
the limits on centrifuges, the duration, but we will take the
deal that at the end of 10 years or 15 years gives us the
ability to have an unlimited nuclear capacity,'' how do we
possibly say no to that? I don't understand how we could
possibly reject that once this deal is in place.
Admiral Fallon. Well, I am not sure to your last point that
anybody is lining up to----
Mr. Deutch. It is not whether they are, it is whether they
could. That is always the debate about nuclear proliferation.
Admiral Fallon. You can speculate all day long about what
could. Many things could. But a couple of realities here. No
sanction relief at all until Iran demonstrates that the uranium
and plutonium are done.
Mr. Deutch. Admiral Fallon, I am sorry, I only have a
couple of minutes. And I am going to have to go, I want to
change in a second. But I understand what has to be done. I am
very familiar with the deal. But the question is, when they
satisfy their requirements to get access to billions of
dollars, that will destabilize the region.
Admiral Fallon. In the near term, who knows what they are
going to do with the money. It wouldn't surprise me at all.
But, you know, one of the ironic things about this----
Mr. Deutch. Okay. That is all I wanted--no, no, that is all
I wanted to confirm.
Admiral Fallon. Yeah, but, you know, taking this thing in
isolation----
Mr. Deutch. No, no, Admiral Fallon, Admiral Fallon, I only
have limited time.
I was just hoping someone would finally acknowledge that.
We can have a debate about this deal and long term where it
goes. In the short term there will be more ability, a greater
ability for Iran to destabilize, and there will be more
violence. That should be our concern. We at least have to
acknowledge it. I appreciate it.
Mr. Wieseltier, I want to get back to your point about the
regime, the anti-American, anti-Semitic, homophobic,
misogynistic. What should be our role----
Mr. Wieseltier. Speaking politely.
Mr. Deutch. I understand, and that was only a short, brief
listing of what you included. What should our foreign policy
look like in a way to make it clear that a regime which makes
being gay punishable by death, for example, a regime that--
well, you have listed them all--I mean, how do we make clear,
especially at this moment as this deal is going forward, that
we are not just hoping that the regime changes but that we very
clearly stand on the side of the Iranian people and not this
difficult and horrible regime?
Mr. Wieseltier. You asked the important question. We don't
make it clear, of course, by immediately rushing to war with
this regime. We begin to make it clear by including the
critique of this regime and the principles upon which that
critique would be based, meaning the full-throated defense of
freedom, no matter how many times George W. Bush used that
word, the full-throated defense of freedom, the notion that the
United States will be on the side of people seeking freedom,
the notion that there is a natural, democratic relationship
between--a natural alliance, a natural relationship between
democrats the world over and between democratic states the
world over.
We have in the last 6 years gone mute on these questions as
a country. We have gone mute. We do not talk about freedom, we
do not stand up to these dictators. We try to find realist--we
specialize, we have a new specialty, not in inaction, but in
inconsequential action. This is, I think, Obama's innovation in
our foreign policy. And I think that verbally and at all levels
of the instruments that I describe, the United States has to
make it clear that it is the country to which all such people
should look to as a source for hope and help, as a source for
hope and help.
We can argue about what kind of help. Those are interesting
debates. The idea that it is not either in our interest or a
fulfillment of our values to offer such societies no help and
no hope, that seems to me completely untrue, completely untrue.
Yeah. That seems to me completely untrue.
I just wanted to add one thing to what my friend, Mr.
Deutch, said to your earlier point, which is when we talk about
the release of the sanction money and what I agree is the
inevitable mischief that will ensue as a result of it, we could
think of it a little differently. I would even be willing to
consider the instability that came from the release of the
sanction money if the stability that the nuclear deal brought
about nuclear weapons would be real, would be long lasting,
would be permanent. That would be an interesting discussion.
And that would be a miserably difficult tradeoff, but it would
be a tradeoff that it might be worth talking about, because the
idea of an Iran that agreed to renounce nuclear weapons would
be a strategic victory of the highest order.
But in an agreement in which the Iranians do not agree to
go that far, so that the nuclear instability remains, it is
deferred, it is postponed, it is brought down, it is delayed,
but remains historically, then the question of the impact of
the released sanction money becomes even more urgent.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen [presiding]. Thank you very much, Mr.
Deutch.
We go to Mr. Weber of Texas.
Mr. Weber. Thank you.
This is for the panel. Basically the deal that is before
us, when it was negotiated by Secretary Kerry and others, would
it have been reasonable--and hopefully this is a yes-or-no
questions for the four of you--would it have been, in your
estimation, reasonable for the world's leading exporter of
terror, has four of our hostages, in your opinion, gentlemen,
would it have been reasonable to say, ``If you are going to be
serious about getting back into the world community, world
neighborhood,'' would it have been reasonable, General Wald, to
say, ``The first thing you do as an act of good faith is give
us our four hostages?'' Would that have been reasonable?
General Wald. My job is to do military advice.
Mr. Weber. Okay. Well, you have an opinion on it? If you
don't, that is fine.
General Wald. I will give you an answer, from a U.S.
citizen: Absolutely.
Mr. Weber. Okay.
General Wald. I mean, we are supposed to protect our
country and that should be reasonable.
If I could just say one last thing on that real quick, and
I agree with you, but when we started the negotiations we had
objectives, I believe. And I think negotiation means
compromise, means discuss. I get that. But you have to have
certain core principles you ought to stick with. And I think we
compromised that on the way down the path.
Mr. Weber. And that is where I am going.
Admiral Fallon, reasonable or not reasonable to say, ``As
an act of good faith, give us our hostages''?
Admiral Fallon. Probably not reasonable.
Mr. Weber. Probably not reasonable.
Admiral Fallon. Do you know why?
Mr. Weber. No.
Admiral Fallon. Because the priority is nuclear weapons.
Mr. Weber. I am not really interested. I don't mean to
sound disrespectful, I am running out of time.
Admiral Bird. Very reasonable.
Mr. Weber. I think so.
Mr. Wieseltier.
Mr. Wieseltier. I think that by not releasing the hostages
as was their foreign policy in the region, they were defying us
and they were making it perfectly clear that the nuclear
agreement would not affect the rest of the----
Mr. Weber. So we are debating with an enemy who has clearly
demonstrated, somebody said over 36 years, by sticking their
finger in our eye and killing Americans, that they don't care
about us. They believe in a culture of death, whereas we
believe in a culture of life. Okay.
So when the administration goes in there and says they want
the best deal, is it reasonable for them to say, ``We will walk
away from a bad deal''? Was that reasonable? I think it is
reasonable, wouldn't we all agree, if it was a bad deal they
would walked away from it?
We are fixing to give them back their money. The
administration did not extract promises for them to, A, stop
exporting terrorism, stop the rhetoric on the United States and
Israel must be destroyed, to stop supplying weapons over to
Assad in Syria, exporting terrorism if you want to get
technical.
So I don't think that is was reasonable when John Kerry
said--and I have a letter from him here dated September the
2nd, he talks about need to vote for this bill and all these
good things are going to happen. And then he goes into on page
2 of this bill, and he basically defines, well, we are going to
plus up Israel's military capability, we are going to plus up
people in the region, their military capability.
Now, can you say arms race? Can you say that the
destabilizing of that region is not going to get better, it is
going to get worse? And to my friend Ted Deutch's comments
earlier about if these other countries come to us and say, ``We
want nuclear power,'' how do we tell them that we have an
administration who will not give energy companies over here a
permit to build a nuclear power plant, but they will take
American tax dollars and build one for our enemies?
Gentlemen, I want to submit to you that is not reasonable.
John Kerry and my company, in my estimation, didn't use reason
to get to this position.
And so I understand the futility of thinking that somehow I
can--and those that support this deal, I am sorry if this
sounds crass, if they have bought into that hook, line, and
sinker--we can't reason somebody out of a position that they
didn't use reason to get into.
Yes or no, General Wald, bad deal?
General Wald. Again, I am not a politician. I will just say
from a military perspective this is not putting us in a better
position.
Mr. Weber. I am going to get to a point.
Admiral Fallon, I take it you think it is yes because you
say we have got to do something after 36 years.
Admiral Fallon. I said given the alternative.
Mr. Weber. War is not the only alternative. We should have
negotiated from power and strength.
Vice Admiral Bird?
Admiral Bird. Yes, sir, I think it is a bad deal.
Mr. Wieseltier. Bad deal.
Mr. Weber. Bad deal.
I don't buy the idea that somehow war is the only other
alternative. If you go back to World War II, Hitler violated
the Treaty of Versailles in 1935 and began to plus up his
military. The British signed a pact with him allowing him to do
that, to rebuild the Luftwaffe, to rebuild their navy, and as a
result the British had to withdraw from the Baltic area. We are
in the process of doing the exact same thing with the Iranian
regime.
Madam Chair, I yield back.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, sir.
Dr. Bera.
Mr. Bera. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
As the chairman stated, this is our 30th hearing on this
topic. I have had multiple individual meetings with passionate
supporters of the deal and folks that are very concerned with
the deal. And individuals have asked me, ``How come you haven't
taken a position?'' Because this is a very important
negotiation and it is a very important crossroads, and there
are both merits to this deal and there are shortcomings to the
deal.
And it is incredibly important, I think, as Admiral Fallon
has pointed out. We do have to think about how we move forward,
though, in terms of a very unstable region.
The goal of this negotiation was to reduce or eliminate
Iran's nuclear threat. As Secretary Kerry has pointed out, as
multiple folks have pointed out both in classified and
unclassified settings, at a minimum it does reduce the threat
for 15 years. And in this hearing it has been pointed out Iran
is fairly close to being a threshold state at this juncture, if
they are not already a threshold state. So I think that is a
goal that has been achieved.
Goal number two, is there enough in this verification
regime? I think, as Secretary Moniz spoke personally to me as
well as in this committee, has indicated he is satisfied on the
nuclear issue that there is enough in the verification regime
that if Iran does cheat on the nuclear issue that they will get
caught.
Goal number three and a concern of mine was, is there
immediate sanctions relief? Is there a signing bonus? Again, as
Secretary Lew has pointed out both in this committee and
privately, there is no immediate sanctions relief. There is no
trust in this. There has to be verification. Iran has to meet
its deal, its portion of the deal, before there is any sanction
relief.
So those are some of the positives that are in here.
Now the concerns. Concern number one, I don't trust Iran. I
expect that the Iranians will cheat, and they will likely cheat
on the margins to test our resolve. And at this juncture I
think it is incredibly important that both the United States
and our allies have that resolve that when they do cheat we
immediately hit them and send them a strong message. It may not
be full sanctions being implemented, but that we send a message
that this is not an acceptable behavior.
As Ranking Member Engel pointed out in his testimony, at
this juncture let's be pragmatic. The deal is likely to move
forward. So let's make sure we as a body do what we have to do
to make sure that we take the deal that is present and we send
a strong message.
Concern number two, Iran has not been a responsible nation.
In fact, I think everyone on the panel, as well as all the
members of this committee, understand that Iran has been an
actor to destabilize the region. That is not what this deal was
about in terms of sanctions against Hezbollah and others. I
think most of us expect, as Iran's economy improves, they
likely will continue to fund these terrorist organizations and
maybe increase funding.
We as Congress, as well as the administration, have to do
everything in our power to reassure our allies, particularly
Israel, to make sure that they have what they need to
counteract what potentially is increased destabilization,
increased funding to Hezbollah, et cetera.
Concern number three is also making sure that we take
advantage of these 15 years. Even folks that are against the
deal understand that it does reduce the nuclear threat. We must
put ourselves in a better position 15 years from now should
Iran pursue nuclear ambitions that we, if we have to intervene
militarily, if we have to intervene in other ways, that we are
in a better position to do so.
Admiral Fallon, I will ask a quick question because I am
running out of time. I think we all agree that Iran has
destabilized the region. What would you suggest that we do,
both as Congress as well as the administration, to work with
our allies to mitigate potentially what is increased
destabilization?
Admiral Fallon. Well, one of the things that we have tried
as a Nation, and certainly our diplomats and commanders in this
region, that I think would be most helpful would be to try to
convince our allies in the area to work together, to cooperate
with one another, to have capability that could be united in
the event that Iran backtracks on these things.
It has been a very, very difficult challenge. They each
have their own interests, their priorities, and so forth, and
it has kind of fragmented their reactions to Iran to date. They
wring their hands, want help, but they have to help themselves.
One of the key points here for me in my experience is the
idea that we are going to go over there and straighten this all
out, we are going to fix all this and they are going to, these
countries, is nonsense. They are going to have to fix it. We
just have to help----
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Admiral Fallon.
Thank you, Dr. Bera.
Mr. Brooks of Alabama.
Mr. Brooks. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
I have some questions I am going to ask each of you to, and
I would appreciate if you would answer them with either a
``yes'' or a ``no'' or an ``I don't know.'' They are very
simple questions.
The first one deals with have you read the bill. I am
talking about House Resolution 1191, Public Law 114-17,
commonly known as the Corker Cardin bill, but more formally
known as the ``Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015.'' And
by way of reference, that is the bill that governs how Congress
is considering this Iran nuclear agreement.
General Wald, have you read it?
General Wald. I haven't read the whole thing.
Mr. Brooks. Admiral Fallon, have you read it?
Admiral Fallon. Not the whole thing.
Mr. Brooks. Vice Admiral Bird, have you read it?
Admiral Bird. No, sir.
Mr. Brooks. Mr. Wieseltier, you have read it?
Mr. Wieseltier. Yes, I have read it.
Mr. Brooks. Thank you.
Now, for those of you who have not read it, and also to
refresh your recollection for those who have, I am looking at
paragraph (a)(1), which is a requirement imposed on the
President of the United States by this agreement that the
President signed: ``Not later than 5 calendar days after
reaching an agreement with Iran relating to the nuclear program
of Iran, the President shall transmit to the appropriate
congressional committees and leadership the agreement, as
defined in subsection (h)(1), including all related materials
and annexes.'' And the agreement is, of course, the Iran
nuclear agreement.
So we have to go to another provision in the bill to find
out what the heck the word ``agreement'' means. And so I turn
to paragraph (h)(1), quote:
``The term `agreement' means an agreement related to
the nuclear program of Iran that includes the United
States, commits the United States to take action, or
pursuant to which the United States commits or
otherwise agrees to take action, regardless of the form
it takes, including any joint comprehensive plan of
action entered into or made between Iran and any other
parties, and any additional materials related thereto,
including annexes, appendices, codicils, side
agreements, implementing materials, documents, and
guidance, technical or other understandings.''
So my question to each of you is, pursuant to this
requirement, has the President properly submitted to the United
States Congress all side agreements related to the Iran nuclear
agreement?
General Wald, as you understand the situation, has the
President done that.
General Wald. I have no idea.
Mr. Brooks. Admiral Fallon, yes, no, or I don't know?
Admiral Fallon. I believe that agreements that the U.S. has
negotiated with Iran----
Mr. Brooks. That is not what this says. It says side
agreements with Iran and third parties.
Admiral Fallon. That we have been a part of.
Mr. Brooks. Have all of those been produced?
Admiral Fallon. That we, the U.S., has been a part of.
Mr. Brooks. No. That is not the requirement under the
statute. All right.
Vice Admiral Bird, do you know if all these side agreements
with Iran and third parties have been provided to the United
States Congress?
Admiral Bird. I read Mr. Pompeo's editorial on the same
thing. I do not know. I am not a lawyer. But I do think the
Congress should review them all.
Mr. Brooks. Mr. Wieseltier.
Mr. Wieseltier. I don't know, but I have a hunch about what
the answer is.
Mr. Brooks. Well, with respect to the International Atomic
Energy Agency's secret agreement with Iran, I will represent to
you that that has not been presented to me as a Member of the
United States Congress, and in talking to my colleagues, it has
also not been presented to them by the Obama administration,
which means in turn that the Obama administration has failed to
comply with the very law that it asked the United States
Congress to sign.
So my next question to you, if you know--well, for time
brevity I see that I have only got a little bit, over a minute
left, I will answer this question myself.
The question is, what is the effect of Barack Obama's
failure to comply with the statute that he signed that governs
our ability to review and/or approve this agreement?
And if you go to paragraph (b)(3) of the agreement--excuse
me, of the law--it says:
``Notwithstanding any other provision of law . . .
prior to and during the period for transmission of an
agreement in subsection (a)(1) and during the period
for congressional review provided in paragraph (a) . .
. the President may not waive, suspend, reduce, provide
relief from, or otherwise limit the application of
statutory sanctions with respect to Iran under any
provision of law.''
And so unless you have something to the contrary, and I
would welcome any illumination that you may have, it seems to
me until such time as the President complies with the statute
and provides the United States Congress all side agreements, he
has no right to relieve any sanctions, and if he does so he is
in violation of the law, which might be an impeachable offense.
Do you have any comments in that regard?
General Wald. No.
Mr. Brooks. Admiral Fallon.
Admiral Fallon. Wouldn't touch it.
Mr. Brooks. Vice Admiral Bird.
Admiral Bird. No, sir.
Mr. Brooks. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Royce [presiding]. All right. Lois Frankel of
Florida.
Ms. Frankel. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for this
robust debate.
I have heard the number 15 a number of times. I have
another way of looking at it. Fifteen seconds. That is how long
a child who lives near the Gaza Strip in Israel has to take
cover when a missile is shot into their city, 15 seconds. There
have been over 10,000 rockets fired by Hamas, with the support
of Iran, into Israel. There are 100,000 missiles that Hezbollah
has aimed at Israel with the help of Iran.
We have been talking a lot about Israel. What about the
children in Syria? They don't even have a bomb shelter to run
into. Barrel bombs with chlorine, with shrapnel dropped. We saw
videos of children suffering from nerve gas poisoning right
here in this meeting. All at the hands of Assad, who is being
propped up by Iran.
Listen, I applaud the President for trying a diplomatic
settlement. I believe in a diplomatic settlement. I believe
Iran should not have a nuclear weapon. But in my mind, the
tradeoff is too great right now, to give billions of dollars to
Iran, and not enough of a concession. So that is my take on it.
But I do have a question, and I think this would help the
public a lot in the discussion, which is if you could explain
the relationship between Iran and Syria and Israel, and why it
is you believe that Iran continues to prop up all this horrific
terrorist activity.
General Wald. Yeah, I mean, I think what you brought up is
really a good point that probably none of us really understand
for sure. But I think the point that I take from that is that
we want to treat Iran like we think. They don't think like us.
And I think most people think: Well, they have to, they are
human beings. They have a different culture, they have a
different way of looking at things, they have different
standards, they have different goals. And I think one of the
biggest problems we have is we really don't understand the
Iranians. I think we----
Ms. Frankel. Excuse me, though, but don't they have a
regional mission?
General Wald. The Iranians?
Ms. Frankel. Yes. They have a----
General Wald. They want to be a regional hegemon, there is
no doubt about it. But the motivation part is difficult. And I
think one of the dangers we have when we go into negotiations
sometimes is this is the way I wish it would, let's act that
way. It really isn't. And I think the Iranians basically have a
very limited reality from the standpoint of ethical
truthfulness.
Admiral Fallon. Opinion?
Ms. Frankel. Yes.
Admiral Fallon. I had a lot of those today. I will give you
one more. Very pragmatic. Their allies and surrogates and
henchmen are Hezbollah in Lebanon. If Syria goes the other way,
they are cut off from them. Very difficult to get the kind of
support into Lebanon given the Israeli control of the coast and
the other border. So very pragmatically, if they lose Syria,
their best buds over there and proxies now, they are in deep
trouble.
Admiral Bird. I agree with General Wald and Admiral Fallon,
I think Iran has regional hegemony, a Shia Crescent, if you
will. They have a strategy that has no rules, no principles, no
morals whatsoever. And their strategy, if you look at the last
15 years to date, has been brilliant, and I believe with this
agreement it is furthered.
Mr. Wieseltier. I agree with what my colleagues have said
and would add only that one of the reasons that some of us have
been futilely agitating for the Obama administration to
intervene in Syria 3 and 4 years ago was because we regarded
the fall of the Assad regime as probably the greatest strategic
wound we could inflict upon the regime in Tehran. Assad is
their most important regional client, and as things now stand,
there is a belt, an access, a corridor, whatever, of Iranian
control, of Iranian influence from Tehran all the way to the
Mediterranean, and that is one of the most important
geopolitical facts about the region.
Ms. Frankel. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chairman Royce. Thank you, Ms. Frankel.
We go now to Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Perry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, would any of you disagree that Iran, over the
last, say, 36 years regarding agreements with the West, nuclear
or otherwise, including on this very current day, have been
known and documented, acknowledged cheaters? Would anybody
disagree with that? I am just trying for expediency sake. Okay.
So, Admiral Fallon, you as well or not?
Admiral Fallon. Yeah, I said that. I don't trust these
guys. What else is new?
Mr. Perry. Okay. All right. Fair enough.
And so in particular, because you are one member of the
panel that has found some accord with this agreement or at
least a way to agree with it or think it is better than it
isn't, I want to have a conversation with you. But I don't want
to have this dialectic conversation because we have a
difference of opinion. But for your part in it, I wonder what
facts--and I pause there purposely--what facts lead you to
believe, after 36 years--and thank you very much for your
service, sir, you were right there, so you have an additional
credibility that very few people have--but what facts lead you
to your conclusion? Not suppositions of the future, not this
Ayatollah will be dead, not----
Admiral Fallon. The conclusion?
Mr. Perry. Yes.
Admiral Fallon. What conclusion?
Mr. Perry. The facts that you concluded that this is a good
deal because of what might happen in the future in 15 years,
that the young population might change and overthrow its
government, the Ayatollah will be dead, and there won't be a
replacement. What facts?
Admiral Fallon. So I wouldn't characterize this as a good
deal, but I would characterize it as the best alternative we
have to stop them from a nuclear weapon. And the reason I think
that this has a chance to succeed is because the detailed
implementation, if they are carried out, of the stopping the
two nuclear pipelines of uranium and plutonium give us the best
chance of achieving what we really want----
Mr. Perry. Arguably----
Admiral Fallon [continuing]. To stop the weaponing.
Mr. Perry. The timeline is 15 years maximum, right? Would
you acknowledge that?
Admiral Fallon. No.
Mr. Perry. If I agree with you on everything--by the way,
and I don't, because I think they are going to continue to
cheat, but that is my supposition.
Admiral Fallon. So do I.
Mr. Perry. But regardless, in 15 years it is open, the
store is open, do whatever you want.
Admiral Fallon. I don't think so. I don't think it is----
Mr. Perry. Based on what?
Admiral Fallon. Based on what? Based on the fact that if,
in fact, this thing is implemented, as it has been laid out in
its various steps, they will have had 15 years with a minimum
amount of fissionable material, who knows what other things are
going to happen? But the key thing is----
Mr. Perry. But in 15 years----
Admiral Fallon. If I could, though----
Mr. Perry. With all due respect----
Admiral Fallon [continuing]. You make this assumption that
in 15 years everything is going to be exactly the same as it is
today. I don't believe that for a second.
Mr. Perry. No, I don't think it is going to be exactly the
same, not the least of which are their increased military
capability over that period of time and our diminished ability
to reach out and touch them tactically because of their
increased military prowess.
But that having been said, I just have to disagree with
you, and it seems to me that the facts don't comport with
reality here. And so to get some of the other folks involved--
before I do that, though, a better deal. Let me ask you this.
Wouldn't a better deal include action, reaction. So they act,
we have problems with them, not only the United States, but the
Western civilized world has a problem with them, so they act in
accordance with some of the demands. In other words, stop some
of the terrorist things do this and do that. And then once you
act, then we will react. But that is not what this deal is.
Would not that, just as a simple structure, be a better deal?
Admiral Fallon. But that is not part of the deal. It might
well be, but that is not part of the deal.
Mr. Perry. But you said there is no better deal, but you
just acknowledged just now that that could be a better deal if
we structured it that way.
Admiral Fallon. That is a fiction. That is a wish.
Mr. Perry. It is a fiction because we haven't made it a
reality. We have the possibility and the ability to make all
that a reality.
Admiral Fallon. I disagree.
Mr. Perry. All right.
Let me ask you this. And Mr.--is it Wieseltier. How you
pronounce your name?
Mr. Wieseltier. Wieseltier, yeah.
Mr. Perry. I am fascinated to get your answer on this, too.
We have very different cultures, ideologies, theologies, et
cetera. Is there a possibility that we will never, ever get
along with Iran or this--the people that think like the people
that are in charge in Iran? And if that is true, at what point
down the line of this agreement, at what point will that be
obvious to you and you will say we have to scuttle where we are
and make the best of what we can and that we are never going to
agree with these people? Is there some point, sir, Admiral?
And if not, if you need to think about it, Mr. Wieseltier,
is there some point.
Mr. Wieseltier. Well, look, I think I would be a little bit
careful about painting cultural differences this grossly. We
are human beings. They are human beings. We can understand each
other. I mean, we can agree, we can disagree, they have their
reasons, we have our reasons. But I am not worried that they
are so far gone into some alien culture, or what someone said
earlier, some culture of death. I mean, I don't know what these
things mean, and they veer toward kind of ugly prejudice, which
I know you don't intend, but one has to be careful.
I think that what we already understand about the world
view of this regime and about its history suffices to establish
that it is our enemy, and it is the enemy of democracy, and it
is the enemy of many states who are our allies, and it is the
enemy of things that we cherish. I think it couldn't be
clearer.
General Wald. Yeah, I would like to comment on that, too,
if I might.
Chairman Royce. General Wald, I am sorry, we are out of
time.
We are going to go to Gerry Connolly of Virginia.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And picking up on your last point, Mr. Wieseltier. Is it
unusual for the United States to negotiate with its
adversaries?
Mr. Wieseltier. Depends when and about what.
Mr. Connolly. Did we do it with the Soviet Union?
Mr. Wieseltier. About certain things we certainly did.
Mr. Connolly. Was the Soviet Union dedicated to our
destruction?
Mr. Wieseltier. In some ways ideologically it was, and it
had the ability to destroy us.
Mr. Connolly. Did it also engage in warfare and terrorism
and insurgency at our expense?
Mr. Wieseltier. It did.
Mr. Connolly. Yeah. Thank you.
Mr. Wieseltier. Well, hold up. May I say something about
it?
Mr. Connolly. Yes, sir.
Mr. Wieseltier. The difference between our approach to Iran
in our negotiations and the approach toward the Soviet Union
was this. This is now the 40th anniversary of the Helsinki
Watch Accord. When it was proposed that the United States begin
to press the Soviet Union on human rights during a period of
intense arms control negotiations, there were people in favor
of detente, a statesman rail, political people who said: You
are out of your mind, the stakes are too high, the nuclear
negotiations will collapse, we cannot go after them on moral
questions, on human rights questions, on democracy. Those
people lost.
Mr. Connolly. Yeah.
Mr. Wieseltier. And we in fact did negotiate with them on
both tracks, and the duality of those tracks is what is missing
here----
Mr. Connolly. Right.
Mr. Wieseltier [continuing]. And what determined some of
the outcomes there----
Mr. Connolly. But there is also one big difference. We
hadn't had a cone of silence for 30 years. This is our first
real substantive engagement with this country in a long time.
And to me it is remarkable that actually we were able to
negotiate an agreement like this, including with two would-be
adversaries in various guises, Russia and China.
Admiral Fallon, how close do you think, is it your
assessment, Iran is to actually crossing that threshold as a
nuclear state right now? Months? Years?
Admiral Fallon. I think it is close, certainly inside of
years, but I am also mindful of the couple of decades worth of
they are going to have it next year or 2 years, I have heard
that from----
Mr. Connolly. Does the agreement in front of us roll back--
--
Admiral Fallon. Here is the key thing.
Mr. Connolly. We are going to have to watch our time,
Admiral Fallon. I am not trying to interrupt you or be rude,
but this chairman is going to put that gavel down in 2 minutes
and 42 seconds. So I want to pursue a line of questioning with
you, if you don't mind.
Admiral Fallon. Okay.
Mr. Connolly. Does this agreement roll back existing
nuclear capabilities?
Admiral Fallon. It takes off the table the fundamental
nuclear capability that Iran has been working hard to----
Mr. Connolly. Does it reduce enriched material?
Admiral Fallon. Of course.
Mr. Connolly. Does it reduce the level of enrichment of
what is left behind?
Admiral Fallon. The amount left behind is a fraction of
what is available to them.
Mr. Connolly. And it reduces it to 3.67 percent. Is that
not correct?
Admiral Fallon. Correct.
Mr. Connolly. Does it mothball a significant number of
existing centrifuges?
Admiral Fallon. Yes.
Mr. Connolly. Does it change the equation at the plutonium
production facility?
Admiral Fallon. Stops it.
Mr. Connolly. Stops it. Does it make it harder or easier
for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon?
Admiral Fallon. At least it appears to be would be much
more difficult.
Mr. Connolly. And I heard the timetable some people want
you to believe, want us all to believe, that somehow magically
this all ends in 15 years and now we have created a guarantee
for a nuclear Iran. Is that your view?
Admiral Fallon. No, because there are parts of this
arrangement that actually go well beyond that, in perpetuity in
some cases. Again, do we trust them? No. We are going to have
to try----
Mr. Connolly. We didn't trust the Soviets. Ronald Reagan
said, ``doveryai, no proveryai,'' trust, but verify. So we have
no reason to trust them, that is why we create a, hopefully,
verifiable and inspection-laden regime, right?
Admiral Fallon. Or as my good friend and colleague Mike
Mullen just said a couple of days ago, I read, distrust.
Mr. Connolly. Distrust.
Real quickly. The so-called--the military referred to
kinetic option. When you look at, you know, other alternatives,
a number of military have testified that the only real viable
alternative--the notion that we are going to go back to the
negotiating table and everyone is going to come back as one
happy family after we renounce our own agreement and then ask
them to start all over again, to me is delusional and very
specious logic, if there is any logic at all. Would you agree
with that?
Admiral Fallon. I think the reality here is that the other
countries have already decided. And, again, it is pretty busy
commercial traffic into Tehran now. So sanctions are gone.
Mr. Connolly. Forgive me for not giving you more time and
others on the panel, but real quickly, would you describe the
kinetic option? What is going to be entailed? If this fails, if
we walk away from this successfully and the negotiating
partners collapse, the military option, the kinetic option,
what does it entail and what are the consequences, you as a
former member of our military, fear?
Admiral Fallon. Probably a little more pointed than that,
actually had the responsibility for executing such a thing if
it were ever called upon. So you can do all kinds of things
militarily. We have overwhelming comparative power to these
guys. We could hurt them badly, in my opinion. The idea that
this would somehow, by dropping a number of bombs, remove the
threat, I believe is total nonsense.
We could remove it, and that would probably involve a very,
very significant land force to go do and basically take care of
things. But to do this all just with a bunch of bombs, I don't
think so.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Royce. We go now to Ted Poe of Texas.
Mr. Poe. The Ayatollah today tweeted: ``Israel will not see
the next 25 years. There will be nothing as a Zionist regime by
the next 25 years.'' The Ayatollah also has recently said more
than once: ``Death to America.'' Seems to me that is their
foreign policy.
Is there any reason, General, that we should not believe
the Ayatollah when he says, ``Death to America, down with
Israel in 25 years,'' or is that just a bunch of rhetoric?
General Wald. You know, I have thought about this a lot,
and I have heard this from people a lot, and they say: ``That
just is rhetoric. You just don't know.''
Mr. Poe. Well, what do you think?
General Wald. I don't know. Frankly, my issue is if I was
100 percent sure they were just saying that, it didn't matter,
then I wouldn't care. I think there is a possibility.
First of all, as was pointed out, they have no compulsion
about killing our troops, our U.S. troops with some of the most
horrendous weapons I have ever seen, these VIDs they have
helped build, and are right behind that every time. The Quds
Force commander the other day said the same thing you just
mentioned.
Mr. Poe. So why this nuclear----
General Wald. They say that every day. If I am in Israel--
--
Mr. Poe. I am sorry, general, I am reclaiming my time. I
know I was just a sergeant in the Air Force, but I am
reclaiming my time.
General Wald. No, anyway, it doesn't seem logical to us,
but I don't think we understand them. I would say you got to
take it for what it is worth.
Mr. Poe. All right.
Admiral, I will ask the Navy a question.
Admiral Fallon. What is that? You passed on the Navy?
Mr. Poe. No, I didn't say I would pass on the Navy.
Let me move on and ask something else. Admiral Bird, let me
ask you a couple of questions about the policy of Iran. We
know, the world knows this deal is going on, and we have Iran
making all of these statements. Assume everything in the deal
takes place. Is the world going to be safer or less safe at the
end of the day from a nuclear Iran?
Admiral Bird. Well, as I have testified, I think, arguably,
in the short term, as Admiral Fallon would say, from a nuclear
perspective we might be safer. In terms of the conventional and
all the things I mentioned from asymmetric, less safe in the
region, more destabilized.
In the long term, we will have a nuclear Iran, which we
have sanctioned, and we will be much less safe.
Mr. Poe. Do you think when the Ayatollah says, ``Death to
America,'' he is serious or is that just some rhetoric?
Admiral Bird. I think he is serious on his tweeting and
things he says, and if you will pardon my cynicism, he never
agreed to not be that way in the deal. He just agreed to comply
with this limitation for 15 years on nuclear weapons.
Mr. Poe. The inspection, if I understand this agreement,
the inspection is going to be done by the Iranians. Is that
right, Admiral Bird?
Admiral Bird. Sir, I don't know. I know there is
speculation. I think this goes to Mr. Issa's questions about
the secret agreement or at least not revealed to the Congress
of the IAEA in Iran and what they have a deal to in terms of
the Additional Protocol.
Mr. Poe. Don't you think Congress ought to see this side
agreement, however many they are, whatever it is, before we
even decide whether or not it is good for the United States?
Admiral Bird. I absolutely do.
Mr. Poe. I think it is foolhardy that we would make a vote
on such an important national security issue if we don't see
the side deals. It seems to me, though, the Iranians are going
to be the ones that investigate the Iranians to see if the
Iranians are cheating or not. I used to be a judge. That is
like putting 12 burglars on a jury for trying a burglar. I have
got problems with the Iranians investigating the Iranians about
nuclear weapon development.
Does anyone see in this agreement that scenario or is it
some independent outside group? Admiral Fallon, what do you
think?
Admiral Fallon. Could I point out something, Congressman?
Mr. Poe. Just answer that question. I only have 5 minutes,
and 20 seconds left. Is it the Iranians going to be
investigating the Iranians and we got to give them 24 days
notice before we show up?
Admiral Fallon. I don't believe that.
Mr. Poe. You didn't see that in the agreement?
Admiral Fallon. I didn't read it that way, no.
Mr. Poe. Did you read the agreement?
Admiral Fallon. Sure.
Mr. Poe. Well, I read it that way.
Admiral Fallon. Okay.
Mr. Poe. So let me just ask all four of you this question.
I have got 4 seconds left. Should Congress approve this deal or
not?
General.
General Wald. Going to make Iran more strong.
Mr. Poe. Admiral Fallon.
Admiral Fallon. Congress should support implementation of
this thing as the best alternative.
Mr. Poe. Admiral Bird.
Admiral Bird. Disapprove the deal, yes, sir.
Mr. Wieseltier. No.
Mr. Poe. Thank you.
Chairman Royce. All right. We go now to Mr. Ted Yoho of
Florida.
Mr. Yoho. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, appreciate you for being here.
I think so much has been said already today. Number one is,
everything that we have already talked about, I think we are
all in agreement that Iran is an enemy of the United States. We
are all in agreement of that.
Iran is the leading sponsor of state terrorism. Of the
young men and women that have been killed or wounded in
Afghanistan and Iraq, 70 percent came from IEDs, 90 percent of
those came from Iran.
And you just stated, Vice Admiral Bird, that this deal will
make Iran stronger?
General Wald, Admiral Fallon, with the release of the
money, whether it is $50 billion or $100 billion, will it make
them stronger?
General Wald. I think that is the issue here, and I think
the issue here is that we are not sure what we are going to get
from a verification. And, yes, they will become stronger----
Mr. Yoho. I am going to talk about that.
Admiral Fallon, will this make them stronger, give them
this money?
Admiral Fallon. I don't believe so.
Mr. Yoho. You don't believe so?
Admiral Fallon. No.
Mr. Yoho. Okay. Mr. Wieseltier.
Mr. Wieseltier. In non-nuclear and conventional measures of
military strength, asymmetrical warfare, terrorism and so on,
yes.
Mr. Yoho. Okay. So let's look at where they are at right
now without this money. They are funding terrorism around the
world. I mean, as short as 3 years ago they plotted to kill the
Saudi Ambassador on U.S. soil. So we have a good idea.
And, Admiral Fallon, you said we can't project into the
future. It is kind of like que sera, sera, kind of a Doris Day
song, you know, no offense to you. Hold on just a second.
Admiral Fallon. I don't believe that for a minute.
Mr. Yoho. And you were saying----
Admiral Fallon. No, I am not clairvoyant. I don't know that
it is.
Mr. Yoho. You served for 40 years in this country, and I
thank you for your service, and I know strategically in the
military you project 5, 10, 15, 20, maybe 100 years, hopefully,
down the future.
All one has to do to look at one's past is to look at the
present situation. You see Iran, the leading sponsor of
terrorism around the world, death to America, death to Israel,
they are funding Hezbollah, Hamas. They have already said that
they are going to retrofit over 100,000 scud-type missiles for
Hezbollah with pinpoint accuracy laser technology. They are
already saying that. They are already going to rebuild the
tunnels. We see what they are doing in Central and South
America.
So we see their present situation. We can predict what they
are going to do in the future by what they are doing today.
And, I mean, it is pretty clear they are an enemy of the United
States, they are going to get stronger from this. And, you
know, as far as an option, we need to walk away from the table,
we need to run away, and the world, I think, will follow us.
Yes, there is economic development in there, but if we
don't walk away from this deal there will be no snapback, and
that was a fallacy anyways. Walk away, bring them back, put the
sanctions back on, and when they are ready to negotiate they
will release our four Americans, they will denounce terrorism,
they will stop stating what they are doing, and this threat
around the world. And it goes back to Sharia--not Sharia law,
but Islamic law, the law of Taqiyyah, lie, cheat, and deceit
every chance you can if it advances the Islamic state. And that
is what they have done for thousands of years.
And, Mr. Wieseltier----
Mr. Wieseltier. No, Congressman, I have to say that my
opposition, my view of the Iranian Government has been
perfectly clear. But for the record, I want to note that
Christians and Jews have lied and cheated for thousands of
years too, that the explanation of this in terms of their
religion seems to me to be inadequate and really cannot explain
what it is that----
Mr. Yoho. I am not going to disagree with that, but I am
not negotiating with a Jewish state or a Christian state that
is going to get a nuclear bomb.
Mr. Wieseltier. Right. I just suggest that----
Mr. Yoho. According to our preamble of the Constitution,
the number one goal of the United States of America is for the
common defense of my country.
Mr. Wieseltier. Absolutely.
Mr. Yoho. And that is what I am worried about.
Mr. Wieseltier. Absolutely.
Mr. Yoho. And this is going to--you all agree that this is
going to make Iran stronger.
Mr. Wieseltier. My point is only that we need to analyze
Iran, even in our opposition to it, in an intellectually
responsible manner.
Mr. Yoho. And intellectually responsible, this is a bad
deal, we need to run away it from.
And I am going to yield back, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate
it. I just wanted to get that out.
I appreciate the service all of you did, and I would hope
you would help us turn this deal down and make a better deal.
The Corker and Cardin amendment or bill, we have already
passed the deadline of that. This is a moot point. We are
beyond that, and we need to start over.
I yield back.
Chairman Royce. We stand adjourned. I want to thank the
panel one more time for your testimony here today, and also
thank you very much for your service. Admiral and Vice Admiral,
General, thank you for your service to this country.
[Whereupon, at 12:30 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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