00:00Mr. President, I have long wanted this war with Iran to end.
00:06Every single day, this war has become a deepening, cascading disaster for the American people
00:13as gas prices eclipse $6 a gallon in many places, as Americans are killed, as new wars
00:23break out in the region, as farms go bankrupt with the ballooning diesel prices.
00:30Every single day this war has gone on, it has become a worse debacle for the United States
00:36and the American people.
00:38And so I have been prepared to swallow basically any deal to end the war, and my desire is still
00:47to stop this war.
00:49I knew the deal was likely going to be bad.
00:53I knew the deal was likely going to be humiliating for the United States of America, but I didn't
01:00know it was going to be this humiliating.
01:02I didn't know the deal was going to be this bad.
01:06The war needs to end, basically upon any terms.
01:11But it is important for us tonight, as we are reading the details of this agreement, to
01:21understand how the terms of this agreement are final, clear, and total proof of how calamitous
01:31this war was, and how it should be a lesson for both Republicans and Democrats, for this administration,
01:38and every future administration, to never make this mistake again.
01:44So let's go through the terms of this agreement, which is all of two pages negotiated by real
01:53estate developers cosplaying as diplomats.
01:58Let's start with the immediate commitments.
02:01What are the immediate commitments that Iran is making and the United States are making?
02:08Iran is making no new commitments.
02:13Iran is making no new commitments.
02:14They are agreeing to open the strait.
02:18The strait was open before the war began.
02:22They are promising that they will not develop or obtain a nuclear weapon.
02:27They had already promised that before the war began.
02:31And they are agreeing to talk about restraining their nuclear research program.
02:39They were willing to talk about that prior to the war beginning.
02:44So, Iran is making no new commitments that did not exist before the war.
02:52Before the war, they committed to keep the strait open.
02:55Before the war, they committed to develop no nuclear weapons.
02:57Before the war, they were willing to talk about the rest of their nuclear research program.
03:02What is the United States committing to in this agreement?
03:05Well, it's a little hard to decipher because of the terms,
03:10which are either mistakenly or deliberately fuzzy.
03:14But we at least know that the United States is committing immediately to release all oil
03:21sanctions and to let Iran trade oil for free all around the world.
03:28That is billions, billions of windfall dollars to the Iranian Treasury.
03:33The United States is agreeing to free up frozen Iranian money.
03:40Could be around 24 billion dollars that will be going immediately to the U.S. Treasury.
03:48Those are the immediate commitments that the United States is making.
03:54Okay, let's talk about what's not in this agreement, what is not included in the commitments that are being made
04:02in the short term.
04:05Iran is making no commitments on reductions or controls on their missile program or their drone program or their support
04:15for terrorism.
04:16In fact, you can see a video today of Donald Trump saying, I think it's cool for Iran to have
04:22missiles.
04:24I think it's kind of unfair to say that Iran shouldn't have missiles if everybody else has it.
04:28He literally said this on TV today.
04:32For the last 100 days, Donald Trump and the administration have been telling us that the American people have to
04:39sacrifice and go to war and spend billions of dollars and have 13 Americans killed and suffer through $6 a
04:45gallon gas prices because we have to stop Iran from having missiles.
04:51The presiding officer and I have sat in briefings in which we have been told that the point of this
04:56war is to destroy Iran's missile capacity, and now the president is saying it just doesn't matter.
05:06President Trump's goals shifted, but they seem to be to get a regime that was more friendly to the United
05:14States and Israel.
05:15We have a harder-line regime now in charge of the country than we did before.
05:19We had a doddering 80-year-old Ayatollah.
05:21We now have a, frankly, much more capable and much more provocative hard-line regime.
05:26He said he wanted to get rid of the drone program.
05:28The drone program is still there.
05:29There's nothing in this agreement about their drone program.
05:31Wanted to get rid of their missile program.
05:33Nothing in this agreement about their missile program.
05:35Wanted to get rid of their nuclear program.
05:37And he pledged that he would carry out this war in a way that got a better deal than President
05:46Obama did.
05:47And, of course, he had to promise that because he pulled out of the JCPOA.
05:52He got none of it in this agreement.
05:55He got none of it in this agreement.
05:56Yes, in this agreement there is a suggestion that there is now going to be a negotiation
06:05between the United States and Iran over their nuclear program.
06:10But that negotiation was available before this war began.
06:15Now, the President may argue that this war has given him additional leverage.
06:20That is nonsensical.
06:23There is fundamentally less leverage today than there was before the war began.
06:30Let's just go through it for a second.
06:34When Obama was negotiating the nuclear deal, he had the oil sanctions in place.
06:39Those are the most serious sanctions, right?
06:41Iran runs on oil revenue.
06:43So the primary leverage Obama had during those negotiations was the oil sanctions.
06:50We are releasing all of the oil sanctions before the nuclear negotiations happened.
06:55That is malpractice.
06:58Overnight, immediately, the leverage available for nuclear negotiations essentially goes up in smoke.
07:04We are also giving them billions of dollars in frozen funds.
07:10In the earlier negotiations, President Obama had Russia and China on our side.
07:19Donald Trump has mishandled foreign relations such that now Iran and Russia are on the Iranian side.
07:29Fundamentally different leverage.
07:31And maybe most importantly, President Obama had the threat of military action.
07:36If you don't get a deal, we can always take military action.
07:41Well, that leverage is gone as well.
07:46Because Iran took our best shot, not only survived, but got the United States to sign an agreement
07:55agreement where we're paying them billions of dollars in order to end the war, including a suggestion that we're going
08:03to create a $300 billion reparations fund.
08:08Guess what?
08:09If you studied history, you know that the winning side doesn't pay reparations.
08:14The losers pay reparations.
08:17And so the Iranians don't have to worry about oil sanctions.
08:23They're gone.
08:24The Iranians don't have to worry about getting back their frozen funds.
08:28We're transferring them.
08:29They don't have to worry about an American military response because they've already seen it and they've survived.
08:34And they don't need to worry about going up against the United States, China, and Russia because China and Russia
08:39are now on their side.
08:41These nuclear negotiations are just destined to fail.
08:44I hope I'm wrong.
08:47But on the backside of this war, the president has almost no leverage.
08:52What's left?
08:55We've dropped, this agreement drops the oil sanctions.
08:57It frees up the frozen funds.
09:00He's already played the military card.
09:08There's a suggestion in this document that there's going to be a specific negotiation about the enriched uranium that Iran
09:19holds.
09:19Now, remember, when Obama was negotiating with Iran, they had 15% enriched uranium.
09:25They weren't close to the enrichment capacity to make a bomb.
09:29Today, they have 60% enrichment capacity because Donald Trump pulled out of the agreement.
09:34Iran now has 60%.
09:36And everybody knows that to get from 60 to the quality you need to produce a bomb takes a matter
09:44of days.
09:46Iran says in this agreement that they'll talk about the enriched uranium.
09:52But they're willing to talk about the enriched uranium being degraded to 3%, which is the number in the JCPOA.
10:02So they basically signal in this agreement that, yeah, we'll talk about getting rid of our enriched uranium or diluting
10:09it.
10:09But we're just going to talk about the same thing that we were talking to the Obama administration about.
10:19All of this was predictable.
10:21All of this was predictable.
10:24I've listened to my hardline colleagues argue that the only way to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon or
10:31to destroy their missiles or to stop their support for terrorism is to go to war with Iran.
10:36Well, we went to war with Iran for 100 days, and on the back side of it, they still have
10:40their nuclear program, they still have their missiles, they still have their drones, they're still supporting terrorism.
10:46It didn't work.
10:48And most of us knew it wasn't going to work.
10:52Most of us said that if you go to war with Iran, we will end up in a worse position.
10:57And here we are in a fundamentally worse position.
11:03The entire scope of this agreement basically boils down to a multi-billion dollar payment to Iran so that Iran
11:15opens the Strait of Hormuz.
11:18What a disaster that is.
11:20An insult to injury?
11:23The text says that Iran promises to open the Strait for 10 years?
11:31Nope.
11:32Five years?
11:34A year?
11:35No.
11:36Iran says we will open the Strait of Hormuz for two months.
11:40Toll-free.
11:42And then after that period of time, we will consult with the government of Oman on the tolling structure.
11:55So, open for 60 days, and then Oman and Iran will talk about the new structure.
12:06I knew it was going to be a humiliating agreement.
12:08I didn't know it was going to be this humiliating.
12:11I want the war to end.
12:13I'm willing to stomach a bad deal.
12:16But this agreement exposes what a colossal mistake it was.
12:24The biggest foreign policy blunder of 20 years to start this war.
12:30And why every hawk who cheer-led us into war with Iran was wrong.
12:36We didn't get anything that you thought we were going to get out of this.
12:41I am hopeful that I am wrong about these negotiations.
12:46I am hopeful that new leverage will materialize.
12:53But I don't see any leverage at all.
12:56It's given up in this agreement.
12:59It's given up in the way that this war has been perpetuated.
13:02I'm glad the war is over.
13:05But I'm furious that it has resulted in our nation's humiliation.
13:09In Iran becoming stronger.
13:12And America becoming weaker.
13:14And everybody.
13:16Republicans and Democrats.
13:19Should be furious about that.
13:21I yield the floor.
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13:33Bye-bye.
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