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This week, I voted for legislation that clearly shows how the President failed to fully comply with the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act because he hadn’t submitted the side agreements negotiated between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran to Congress.  This meant that the congressional review period established by that law hadn’t begun, and the President could not lift or suspend sanctions on Iran until that occurred.

However, on the eve of the most horrifying attack on US soil in history, Senate Democrats succeeded in blocking a Republican resolution to disapprove the Iran Nuclear Deal from going to a final vote. Ironically, on September 11, where we hear so many comments about how “we must never allow this to happen again” – it’s exactly what’s being done.  Simply put, Senate Democrats ensured that one of the most critical decisions facing the present and future safety/security of this Nation and her allies would not be debated on the Senate floor. Instead, the President will now enable a state sponsor of terror that has called for our destruction every day since 1980 to re-arm with conventional weapons and deploy the most effective air defense system available on the open market.  At a minimum, this deal deserved floor debate; it should have been a long, arduous battle on a field that would cost no lives, where cooperation to produce a better result was possible.  But now that’s not possible.  Senate Democrats prevented American voices from being heard – and it is reprehensible.

The U.S. cannot afford a deal that leaves Iran with an intact pathway to nuclear weapons and provides us no credible ability to inspect and verify their actions – or lack thereof. As a Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I’ve participated in numerous hearings and briefings regarding nuclear negotiations with Iran. Secretary of State John Kerry testified that these negotiations would be used to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program – that was the goal; instead, the agreement allows Iran to retain a vast enrichment capacity, continue its research and development, and gain an industrialized nuclear program once key provisions of this agreement begin to expire in as little as ten years.  The agreement also lifts restrictions on Iran’s Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) program in just eight years. Countries build ICBMs for one reason: to deliver nuclear weapons.  Iran doesn’t need an ICBM program to strike Israel; its only target is on the other side of the globe. 

Supporters of the agreement present it as the only alternative to war with Iran. Recent history fails to comport with this logic. Coordinated economic sanctions brought Iran to the negotiating table. The Obama Administration should have walked away from this deal and sought stronger sanctions from Congress in order to gain better negotiating leverage. There’s no binary solution here that means without this deal there has to be war; that’s just simply untrue.

I’ll continue to fight this deal. The President is basing his actions on hope - that Iran suddenly will change its well documented behavior, even though it's failed to do so in 35 years.  Iran has cheated all the way through this negotiation process as they continually and actively disregard compliance with IAEA and UN Security Council directives. “Hope” is never a course of action - especially when the stakes mean putting the most dangerous weapon on the planet in the hands of the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.