Richard Durbin

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I wish to thank my colleague, the Senator from Delaware. That was a very thoughtful presentation. The Senator from Delaware has a personal interest in and has made a personal commitment to this issue. I thank him for his insight. I now yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Michigan.

Mr. DURBIN. I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Maine.

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, let me thank my colleague from Maine for his thoughtful presentation. I would like to ask how much time remains.

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I am going to yield to the Senator from Ohio. I hope 7 minutes is adequate. If it is not, I would ask unanimous consent to extend that and offer time to the other side or whatever is necessary. I yield to the Senator from Ohio.

Mr. DURBIN. I would say to the Senator from Tennessee through the Chair, it is my understanding that we have two 5-minute segments now. Senator Warner and Senator Coons each claim 5 minutes.

Mr. DURBIN. The Senator from Virginia can proceed.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, please advise both sides of the time remaining.

Mr. DURBIN. If I might ask the Senator from Tennessee to clarify, would the last part of his request relate to the period between 3 p.m. and 3:45 p.m.?

Mr. DURBIN. I have no objection.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, a lot has been said about the impact of this agreement. I would like to speak for a moment about the impact of no agreement. What if the Republicans and those who oppose this agreement have their way and this agreement goes away? Iran is still a nuclear threshold state. If you have your way and stop this agreement, the result will be literally leaving in Iran the capacity to build 10 nuclear weapons today. And the timing on that: 2 to 3 months before they have the fissile material for a nuclear weapon--if you have your way and kill this agreement. That is some holiday surprise, that if we walk away from this agreement, this effort for inspection, Iran could develop a nuclear weapon. That is the reality. If you have your way, there will be no inspectors. Iran will be closed off to the world. How can that possibly make the Middle East safer for Israel or for any other country in the world? How can it make it safer if we as a coalition who have worked so hard to build this agreement fail in the effort? What I have listened for during the last 3 days of debate is any suggestion from the other side of the aisle about what is the alternative to this agreement. Now, some have been bold enough to say it is military, and we shouldn't wince at the prospect of a military solution. One Senator on the other side of the aisle said 4 days is all we need to take them out; we will take care of Iran. I have heard that before, I say to my friends. I heard it before the invasion of Iraq where we were going to be greeted as liberators, and it would be a matter of weeks before our troops would be coming home. It didn't turn out that way. What we are trying to do and what the President is trying to do is to start a diplomatic process to avoid the military option, to avoid a war. That is why I am supporting it. I think it is the right thing to do. I am sorry that the vote we are about to cast here is a procedural vote. Twice, Senator Reid has asked Senator McConnell to give us a straight, up-or-down, clean vote on this question of disapproval by a 60-vote margin, and twice Senator McConnell has objected and insisted instead on this procedural vote. We know where everyone stands. Everyone in this chamber has publicly declared where they stand on this matter. That should be the rollcall that we take next. Unfortunately, we are faced with a procedural rollcall. I will close by saying one word about the Members on this side of the aisle. For 6 weeks I have contacted them--and in fact harassed them-- asking them what they were going to do on this important question. For any people who are critical of this Senate, believing it is too superficial and too partisan, I will tell you that on this side of the aisle they took their time, they read the agreements, they were briefed by the intelligence agencies and Department of Defense, and they made up their mind and announced their position publicly. It is a proud moment for this institution because I think that is what we all believe to be our responsibility. As we close this debate, I ask those who support the agreement to vote no on the cloture motion. I yield the floor.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, how much time is remaining on the Democratic side?

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I don't know that we have faced a debate of this historic importance for 12 years, because it was about 12 years ago that we voted on the floor of the Senate on whether to invade Iraq. Senators don't forget those debates. What is at stake is war. What is at stake is human lives--not only the enemy but the innocent and those who are friends. I remember that debate very well. There were 23 of us who voted against the invasion of Iraq--one Republican, Lincoln Chafee, and 22 Democrats. At the time, we were told by Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, and others that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and we had to stop them for fear that they would use those weapons against our allies and our friends and even against the United States. It turned out that there were no weapons of mass destruction-- none. After the invasion, they scoured the country and could find no evidence of those weapons. The cost of that war is incalculable. The numbers only tell part of the story. There were 4,844 Americans who lost their lives. Tens of thousands have come home with traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder. The cost to our Treasury is in the trillions. That and the war in Afghanistan--incidentally, the longest war in our history-- were efforts in the Middle East to try to bring some order to chaos. Only limited success emerged from those efforts after all of the costs were paid in human life and treasure. Those who are quick to talk about a military option to deal with the Iranians should be reminded, as the Senator from Vermont just said, of the extraordinary cost of that alternative. I have always felt then and now that diplomacy should be the first effort to try to avoid military action, to try to avoid a war. That is what this is about. This President, Barack Obama, decided to make the sanctions regime tougher than ever. To do it, he had to engage countries from around the world that depended on Iranian oil and were prepared to stop importing Iranian oil to punish them until they would come to the negotiating table. He gets absolutely no credit for that from the other side of the aisle--none--but he should. He then took our major leaders and allies in the world and brought together a P5+1 coalition. We met with the Ambassadors from these countries. It was hard, just as an amateur student of history, to sit across the table from the Ambassadors of China, Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France and imagine that coalition coming together for any purpose that would serve the United States in the cause of world peace, but they did. The P5+1 came together and entered into a serious negotiation in an effort to stop the Iranians from developing a nuclear weapon. That was the goal. That was the reason for the sanctions. There are many aspects of Iranian foreign policy and conduct which are reprehensible to me even to this day that don't reach that level of nuclear weaponry, but we focused on nuclear weaponry because we knew that was critical. If Iran developed a nuclear weapon, it would threaten our greatest friend and ally in the Middle East, Israel, as well as other countries that have worked closely with the United States, and trigger an arms race on the Arabian Peninsula, which would have been devastating. So we set out to stop that from happening. Something happened during the course of that negotiation which was unprecedented in the history of the United States. On March 9, 2015, 47 Republican Senators sent a signed a letter to the Ayatollah, the Supreme Leader in Iran. I have read the letter over and over again and still cannot believe it. On March 9, 2015, 47 Republican Senators sent an open letter to the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran which basically said: We know you are in negotiation with the United States over stopping the development of a nuclear weapon, but understand--this letter makes it clear--that this President does not have the last word. That has never happened before. I have asked those who studied the history of this country if there was ever a time when the United States of America was involved in delicate international negotiations and a group of Senators or Congressmen wrote to the other side--to the Iranians--to tell them to think twice before negotiating with the United States of America. It has never happened. It is unprecedented. So 47 Republican Senators who did not want to wait until the agreement was reached or written decided in advance to warn the Ayatollah in Iran not to negotiate with the United States or to assume that any agreement would be enforceable with Congress or future Presidents. What a contrast that 47 Republicans would decide in the midst of negotiations to send that letter--what a contrast with the Democratic side of the aisle. For the last 6 weeks, I have been in touch with my colleagues over here--they are probably tired of hearing from me--talking about this agreement and where they stood. I know, but for a few, what they went through. Many of them were trying to educate themselves on the terms of this agreement because it is complicated. They were talking to experts in the field. One Senator came back and spent 5 hours with the intelligence agencies here in Washington trying to understand the complexities of this agreement and how they worked. After all of that time, after all of that reflection, and after all of that study, these Senators announced their positions. Forty-two supported the President's position, and four opposed the President's position. Instead of prejudging the agreement or assuming the agreement was bad, they took the time to read it and study it. They took the time to use their responsibilities as Senators to make sure they understood this historic document, and 42 came out in favor of it. I will tell the Presiding Officer that at this point in history, we have a tough decision to make--whether we as a nation will pursue this agreement in an effort to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon or the alternative. I have yet to hear a critic of this agreement honestly present the alternative. The alternative is obvious. Today Iran owns enough fissile material to make 10 nuclear weapons. The Prime Minister of Israel has warned the world that they are only months away from developing a nuclear weapon in Iran. Yet we hear from the other side of the aisle that we should walk away from any inspections or agreement to stop a nuclear weapon. What is going to happen the next day in Iran if that point of view prevails? What happens if this agreement we have entered into should founder and fail? The door is closed, no inspectors, no negotiations, and Iran is on its own. That is not the recipe for a safer world. That is not the recipe for a safer Israel, as far as I am concerned, and that is why I support this. I am happy to be joined in my support with leaders such as GEN Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under a Republican President and former Secretary of State under a Republican President, who has endorsed this agreement. He has told us: Don't trust Iran. Mistrust Iran, if you will, and verify. We are going to send in scores of inspectors to verify--inspectors who have access to everything in Iran--and if there is a dispute over access, it is one that can be resolved in a matter of days or weeks. I might add that there are telltale pieces of evidence for the development of nuclear weapons that the Iranians could never destroy in that of period of time. We will know if they have breached this agreement, and in knowing that, we have created the authority within the United Nations for the United States alone to reimpose sanctions based on a breach of this agreement by Iran. It is an extraordinary agreement. Could it be stronger? Of course. But when we look back throughout history at the skeptics who have attacked Presidents of both political parties who have tried to reach agreements to create a more peaceful world, this is no different. When President Ronald Reagan--literally a deity in the Republican Party-- decided to sit down and negotiate with Mikhail Gorbachev over nuclear weapons, the conservative wing of the Republican Party said he was signing a suicide pact, wasting his time, and threatening the United States--Ronald Reagan--in negotiating with Gorbachev. The same held true when Richard Nixon decided to open negotiations with China. The critics on the right were quick to condemn him. Chinese were sponsoring North Vietnamese who were killing American soldiers. There were plenty of reasons not to do it. Richard Nixon did it with bipartisan support, and the world is a better place for the courage he showed. At this point, as we bring this aspect of the debate to a close--and I see Senator Reed is here and will be recognized soon--we listened carefully to those who are critical of this agreement. It turns out that not a single Republican Member of the House or Senate is supporting this agreement--not one. It is hard to think back in diplomatic history when there has been such a partisan division within Congress on an issue of this historic importance and magnitude, but that shouldn't deter us. We need to work with our allies so we can move forward with the inspections and the deadlines to make certain we do everything in our power to bring peace to the Middle East, short of war. Those who want military action should speak up and say so. I don't. I want to see this done through diplomatic means, and I believe this effort is a good-faith effort to achieve that. I yield the floor.

Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator from Utah, the President pro tempore, advise the Senate if we are operating under a unanimous consent agreement as to time allocations?

Mr. DURBIN. Between which hours?

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, will the President pro tempore be kind enough to tell me how much time has been used by the Republican side since 2:15 p.m.

Mr. DURBIN. I do not object.

Mr. DURBIN. I say to my friend from Arizona, I have told you, we have Democratic Senators prepared to speak. So when my friends are ready to give up the floor, we will be glad to recognize our Democratic Senators.

Mr. DURBIN. We have been waiting patiently.

Mr. DURBIN. I say to my friend from Arizona, we have a Democratic Senator prepared to speak at this moment. Is the Senator prepared to yield?

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, we have Senators on the Democratic side prepared to speak when the Republicans are ready to yield.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. The Republican side has already used 45 minutes, so I hope the Senator from Texas is saying that between 2:15 p.m. and 5 p.m. the time will be equally divided, and we will rotate from one side to the other.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, what time is remaining on the Democratic side?

Mr. DURBIN. How much on the other side?

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I would like to respond very briefly--very briefly--before yielding to Senator Nelson of Florida. I would say to the junior Senator from Texas that I hope he listened carefully last Sunday when General Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--a man who risked his life in battle for America, a man who served as Secretary of State under Republican President George W. Bush--came forward and endorsed this agreement that has been proposed before the Senate. So to suggest that General Powell and so many others are not aware of the security aspects of this agreement I don't believe is a fair characterization. General Powell and others understand better than I can, better than the Senator from Texas can what it means to face these security issues. I would like to quote what he said. He said that ``with respect to the Iranians, don't trust, never trust, and always verify.'' So he comes to his conclusion supporting this agreement with the same degree of skepticism that many of us do. I would not discount for a minute some of the activities that have been cataloged by the junior Senator from Texas when it comes to Iran, but if you think those were terrible--and they were--imagine Iran with a nuclear weapon. That is what is at stake in this debate. Currently Iran has the capacity to build 10 nuclear weapons--10. We want to stop them from doing that, put inspectors in place. So when you list the litany of horrors coming out of Iran's terrorist activities, imagine those activities with a nuclear weapon. Our goal is to stop the development of a nuclear weapon in Iran. I yield the floor to the Senator from Florida.