transcript:
The Senator
from Florida.
Mr. President,
I will be brief, I know that the senator from Tennessee would like to close on
this matter. I think everything that needs to be said about the details of this
deal has already been said. I do want to be recorded for history’s purposes,
for I know what is going to happen in regards to this if it goes through.
Iran will
immediately use the money that it is receiving from sanctions relief to begin
to build up its conventional capabilities. It will establish the most dominant military
power in the region outside the United States and it will raise the price of us
operating in the region. They are going to build anti-access capability,
rockets capable of destroying our aircraft carriers and ships, continue to
build the swift boats that are able to come on us, these fast boats that are
able to swarm our naval assets, and will make harder and harder for US troops
to be in the region. They will also work with other terrorist groups in the
region that target American servicemen and women, and they may and may not deny
that they are involved, but they will target us and raise the price of our
presence in the Middle East until they hope to completely pull us out of that region.
They will
also continue to build long range missiles. Missiles capable of reaching the
United States, those are not affected by this deal and they will continue to
build them as they have been doing. And then at some point in the near future,
when the time is ripe, they will build a nuclear weapon, and they will do so
because at that point they will know that they have become immune, that we will
no longer be able to strike their nuclear program because the price of doing so
would be too high.
This is
not just a work of imagination, it exists in the world today – it is called
North Korea, where a lunatic possesses dozens of nuclear weapons, and a long
range rocket that can already reach the United Sates. And we cannot do anything about it. An attack
on North Korea today would result in an attack on Tokyo or Soul, or Guam, or
Hawaii or California.
And so the
world must now live with a lunatic in possession of nuclear weapons.
And this is
the goal Iran has as well. To reach the point when they become immune to any sort
of credible military threat, because the price of military strike would be too
high, and then they become an established nuclear weapons power. And never in
the history of the world has such a regime ever possessed weapons so capable of
destruction.
Iran is
led by a supreme leader who is a radical Shi’a cleric with an apocalyptic vision
of the future. He is not a traditional geopolitical actor who makes decisions on
the basis of borders or simply history, or because of ambitions. He has a religious
apocalyptic vision of the future. One
that calls for triggering a conflict between the non-Moslem world and the
Moslem world. One that he feels specially obligated to trigger. And he is going to possess nuclear weapons?!
This is
the world we are on the verge of leaving our children to inherit, and perhaps we
ourselves will have to share in it. And so I want to be recorded for history’s purposes
if nothing else to say that those of us who opposed this deal understood where
it would lead, and we are making a terrible mistake, and I fear that the
passage of this deal will make it even harder for us to prevent it, and I hope that
there is still time to change our minds, but here is the good news. Iran may have
a supreme leader, but America does not. And in this nation we have a republic,
and soon we will have new leaders, perhaps in this chamber, but also in the
executive branch, and I pray that the first day in office, they will reverse
this deal and re-impose the sanctions, and back them up with a credible threat
of military force, or history will condemn us, for not doing what needed to be
done at this critical moment in world’s history. I yield the floor.
