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