WASHINGTON – On the one year anniversary of the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism, delivered remarks on the U.S. Senate floor on Wednesday outlining the dangers of the Trump administration’s Iran policy and how the United States and the world are less safe because of it. 

Earlier today, Murphy blasted the administration in the wake of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s announcement that Iran would restart nuclear activity in retaliation for U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. In his remarks, Murphy called out the Trump administration’s misguided Iran policy, which moves us further from the goals of ensuring Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon and preventing the reemergence of the ISIS. 

“What the Trump administration has done is to goad Iran into restarting their nuclear weapons program. They announced last night that they are pulling out of their side of the Iran nuclear agreement and they are going to start to once again take steps that could lead them to a quick breakout to a nuclear weapon. Those that opposed the agreement that President Obama signed did so in part because they said that it could allow Iran to restart its nuclear weapons program in 10 to 13 years, and 10 to 13 years wasn't enough security to sign on to that agreement. Well, President Trump has now managed to press the Iranians into restarting their nuclear weapons program in four years…We got 4 years, and Iran is back on a potential path to a nuclear weapon,” said Murphy. 

“By telling these militias inside Iran that they have to make a choice today between the United States and this newly designated terrorist group, the Iranian militias make the choice easily. They align themselves with Iran, their neighbor, not the United States. The effect of our decision is to push more of these militia groups closer to the Iranians. Second, we no longer can talk diplomatically to the groups that have associations with the IRGC, and that's a lot of these militia groups, meaning the United States effectively takes itself out of the game diplomatically. We no longer have the ability to engage in political reconciliation in the country like we used to. And all of this presses the case of ISIS. As they are able to make the case that Baghdad is more and more leaning towards Shia interests and Iranian interests, as the United States isn't there in order to press the reconciliation case, ISIS has an opportunity to reemerge. All of this also accrues to the benefit of those interested in Iraq who want the United States military out,” Murphy added after the administration designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a Foreign Terrorist Organization. 

The full text of Murphy’s remarks is below:

MURPHY: Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, Senator Romney and I had the privilege over the Easter recess to visit our troops and our diplomats in Iraq. They are serving us well. They are putting their lives on the line, as we partner with the Iraqis to make sure that ISIS does not reconstitute itself in Iraq or in Syria. We have taken their territory away from them, but there are still over 20,000 or so ISIS fighters and loyalists in and around the region. And once again our trip proved to both of us that our soldiers, our diplomats are the best in the world. We're so lucky to have them be so willing to stand on guard for us all over the world, maybe the most important assignment today in Iraq as we continue to battle the scattered remnants of ISIS. 

And, Mr. President, I don't want a president who takes the unquestioning advice of his military leaders. I want a president who's willing to push back. But nobody knows how to defeat ISIS better than the U.S. military. They effectively have done it twice. They beat Al Qaeda in Iraq and then they came back again with many partners to take territory away from ISIS. And nobody takes more seriously the threat of ISIS's reemergence or the threat of an expansionist Iran than the United States military. But I'm here today to talk about our president's refusal over and over again to listen to the advice that he is being given by his generals and by his advisors at the Department of Defense. Instead he is listening to the Iran hawks inside the White House that think about this problem through the air conditioned safety of their West Wing offices with little regard to how things actually work on the ground in the real world of the Middle East. And so I want to talk about our two main objectives today in Iraq and in Iran, and I want to frame it in the context of today's disastrous news that the Iranians are restarting elements of their nuclear weapons program. 

First let's talk about a bipartisan commitment that we share, and that is the commitment to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. In and of itself it would be a world disaster. It would present an immediate existential threat to our partners in Israel, and it would result in an arms race throughout the region that would be exacerbated by the fact that the Trump administration in the last two years has made the decision to engage in a new nuclear partnership with the Saudis, which put the Saudis on a quicker path to obtain a nuclear weapon in the case that arms race set off. What the Trump administration has done is to goad Iran into restarting their nuclear weapons program. They announced last night that they are pulling out of their side of the Iran nuclear agreement and they are going to start to once again take steps that could lead them to a quick breakout to a nuclear weapon. Those that opposed the agreement that President Obama signed did so in part because they said that it could allow Iran to restart its nuclear weapons program in 10 to 13 years, and 10 to 13 years wasn't enough security to sign on to that agreement. Well, President Trump has now managed to press the Iranians into restarting their nuclear weapons program in four years. We didn't get 10 years, we didn't get 13 years. We got 4 years, and Iran is back on a potential path to a nuclear weapon. 

Now, the president will say that he is imposing crippling new sanctions on Iran such that they will come back to the negotiating table, but let's be honest, there is not a plausible path for that to happen in the next year and a half of the president's term. It took President Obama two terms to engage in multilateral sanctions to get the Iranians to the negotiating table. There are no credible analysts of Iranian behavior or of politics in the Middle East that will tell you that the Iranians are going to come back to the negotiating table in the next 12 months, in part because the balance of powers has totally flipped. Under the Obama administration, it was the United States, Europe, China, and Russia on one side, and the Iranians on the other side. President Trump has managed to flip that alignment such that it is now the Iranians, the Europeans, the Chinese, and the Russians on one side and the United States isolated on the other. If you don't believe me, just take a look at the statements that many of those parties sent out in response to Iran's decision last night. Effectively aligning themselves with the Iranian’s decision to restart their nuclear program instead of aligning themselves as they had for years with the U.S. position of strict nonproliferation. 

This is a disaster for the United States that Iran restarted its nuclear weapon program. It is a massive failure of President Trump's strategy. But it is only one element of a meandering Iran strategy that is accruing to the national security detriment of the United States, because let's talk about our second primary objective in this region. I referenced it at the outset. It is to prevent the reemergence and reconstitution of ISIS inside Iraq and Syria. And we have bad news to report there as well. The Trump administration took another step that had been counseled against by his generals, by his military leaders, and that is the designation of the IRGC, an element of the Iranian military, as a terrorist group. Now nobody can defend the actions of Iran or the IRGC. They absolutely support terrorism in the region. For years, they supported Shia militias inside Iraq that were shooting at and killing American troops. And yet, notwithstanding that activity, our military leaders and our diplomats inside Iraq cautioned the administration against making this designation because weighing the costs of it against the benefits to our military leaders was a clear case. 

The costs are thus. By telling these militias inside Iran that they have to make a choice today between the United States and this newly designated terrorist group, the Iranian militias make the choice easily. They align themselves with Iran, their neighbor, not the United States. The effect of our decision is to push more of these militia groups closer to the Iranians. Second, we no longer can talk diplomatically to the groups that have associations with the IRGC, and that's a lot of these militia groups, meaning the United States effectively takes itself out of the game diplomatically. We no longer have the ability to engage in political reconciliation in the country like we used to. And all of this presses the case of ISIS. As they are able to make the case that Baghdad is more and more leaning towards Shia interests and Iranian interests, as the United States isn't there in order to press the reconciliation case, ISIS has an opportunity to reemerge. All of this also accrues to the benefit of those interested in Iraq who want the United States military out. 

There was an effort just months ago to push a bill through parliament to expel the United States. And our continued hard line on Iran, as much as it may make sense to the air-conditioned offices of the White House, allow for those interests in Iraq to potentially successfully litigate a case to push the U.S. military out of that country, which would, once again, open the gates to ISIS. The Administration's policy, as far as I can tell, is to set in motion a series of escalatory actions with respect to Iran that has no end game with no logical conclusion. There isn't a diplomatic process at the end of this rainbow. The president has a year and a half left in his term. There isn't enough time and there's not willingness in Iran and no partners on our side, as I mentioned. So what's the other alternative? Military action? An invasion of Iran would be an unmitigated national security disaster. It would make the mistake of invading Iraq look positively benign in retrospect. There is no appetite in America for such an endeavor and there is no way the votes exist in Congress to authorize such an action. The risk of course is that we fall into war by accident or through a series of events that appear as an accident. And when you commit yourself to such an unplanned, unscripted series of military and diplomatic escalations as the Trump administration has, then you have no working channel, and you have no working channel of communications to settle misunderstandings, then accidents can easily happen. Shots can be fired, lives can be lost. And then our options suddenly narrow. That is the real risk of the path that we are on today. And what scares the heck out of me is that it's a path that is seemingly being made up day by day. And it's a path that is opposed by our military and laid out without any meaningful input from our diplomats that are on the ground in the region. That is a potential recipe for disaster, and it shouldn't matter whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, a liberal or a conservative, because messing around in the Middle East in countries like Iran and Iraq with no strategy and no clear set of goals –  it should send chills down every Senator's spine. I yield the floor. 

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