February 01, 2022
WASHINGTON U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today took to the Senate Floor to deliver remarks to lay out his growing concerns with the Biden administrations latest round of negotiations over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) while Iran continues to rapidly escalate its nuclear program, which has brought it to the brink of having enough material for a nuclear weapon.
As someone who has followed Iran's nuclear ambition for the better part of three decades, I am here today to raise concerns about the current round of negotiations over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and Irans dangerously and rapidly escalating nuclear program that has put it on the brink of having enough material for a nuclear weapon, said Chairman Menendez, making an impassioned pitch for the Biden administration and our allies to exert more pressure on Iran to counter its nuclear program, its missile program, and its dangerous behavior around the Middle East. I have been cautiously optimistic about the Biden administrations initial efforts. I waited for the last year to see results. Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Secretary of State and others, senior members of the Administration, insisted they would look for a longer and stronger agreement. I have a pretty good sense of what I think longer and stronger means. Longer is obvious, more time. Stronger dealing with elements that had not been previously dealt with. However, a year later, I have yet to hear any parameters of longer or stronger terms or whether that is even a feasible prospect. And even when it seemed a constructive agreement might be possible last summer, upon taking office, the Raisi government abandoned all previous understandings and, as I mentioned, made absolutely clear that Irans ballistic missiles and regional proxy networks are not negotiable. Moreover, at this point, we seriously have to ask what exactly are we trying to salvage?
While some have tried to paint me as belligerent to diplomacy or worse I have always believed that multilateral, diplomatic negotiations from a position of strength are the best way to address Irans nuclear program, Chairman Menendez continued: We cannot ignore Irans nefarious support for terrorism or accept threats to American interests and lives. We must welcome legitimate and verifiably peaceful uses of nuclear power, but remain true to our nonproliferation principles and our unyielding desire to build a more stable, safer, prosperous world for the American people and all peace-loving people to thrive. In order to do so, Iran cannot and must not possess a nuclear weapon.
Find a copy of Chairman Menendezs remarks as delivered below.
Madam President, for nearly 30 years, first as a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and to this day as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I have had the privilege of engaging in the most pressing foreign policy and national security issues facing our nation.
While we are all rightly focused on the crisis unfolding around Ukraine, we must not lose sight of how dangerously close Iran is to becoming a nuclear-armed state, for we know that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose an unacceptable threat to U.S. national security interests, to our allies in Europe and to overall stability in the Middle East.
As someone who has followed Iran's nuclear ambition for the better part of three decades, I am here today to raise concerns about the current round of negotiations over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and Irans dangerously and rapidly escalating nuclear program that has put it on the brink of having enough material for a nuclear weapon.
Three to four weeks. A month or less.
Thats how long most analysts have concluded it would take Iran to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb, if they choose to do so.
That is not a timeline we can accept.
That is why Im calling on the Biden administration and our international partners to exert more pressure on Iran to counter its nuclear program, its missile program, and its dangerous behavior around the Middle East, including attacks on American personnel and assets.
Before I continue, let me set the record straight.
While some have tried to paint me as belligerent to diplomacy or worse I have always believed that multilateral, diplomatic negotiations from a position of strength are the best way to address Irans nuclear program.
And I have always advocated for a comprehensive diplomatic agreement that is long lasting, fully verifiable, and with an enforceable snapback system of sanctions should Iran breach any terms.
It was for very specific reasons that I opposed the JCPOA back in 2015, as well as an underlying concern that I just could not shake: a sense that the deal itself was a best-case scenario hinging on good faith actors and overly-optimistic outcomes without enough consideration for the worst-case scenarios that might arise from the behavior of bad actors.
Today, many of the concerns I expressed about the JCPOA back in August of 2015 are coming back to haunt us in the year 2022.
First and foremost, my overarching concern with the JCPOA was that it did not require the complete dismantlement of Irans nuclear infrastructure.
Instead, it mothballed that infrastructure for 10 years, making it all too easy for Iran to resume its illicit nuclear program at a moment of its choosing.
The deal did not require Iran to destroy or fully decommission a single uranium enrichment centrifuge.
In fact, over half of Irans operating centrifuges at the time were able to continue spinning at its Natanz facility.
The remainder more than 5,000 operational centrifuges and nearly 10,000 not yet operational were to be merely disconnected. Instead of being completely removed, they were transferred to another hall at Natanz where they could be quickly reinstalled to enrich uranium, which is exactly what we have seen happen over the past year.
Nor did the deal shut down or destroy the Fordow nuclear facility, which Iran constructed underneath a mountain to house its covert uranium enrichment infrastructure. Under the JCPOA, it was merely repurposed.
Now, Iran is back in business at Fordow; spinning its most advanced centrifuges and enriching uranium to a higher level of purity than before it entered the JCPOA.
In the two years since President Trump left the JCPOA, Iran has resumed its research and development into a range of centrifuges, making rapid improvements to their effectiveness. Huge strides that we will never be able to roll back.
Today, Iran has more fissile materials 2500kg, more advanced centrifuges, and a shorter breakout time three to four weeks than it had in 2015.
This is exactly why I was so concerned over the JCPOA framework of leaving the vast majority of Irans nuclear program intact.
This is how Iran was able to rapidly rebuild and advance its enrichment capabilities once the agreement fill apart. That was a serious mistake.
Back in 2015, I also expressed my grave concern that Iran only agreed to provisionally apply the Additional Protocol of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
The Additional Protocol is what allows the International Atomic Energy Administration to go beyond merely verifying that all declared nuclear material and facilities are being used for peaceful purposes and provides it with a verification mechanism to ensure states do not have undeclared nuclear material and facilities.
The Additional Protocol was particularly important because Iran has never fully come clean about its previous clandestine nuclear activities.
For well over two decades, mounting concerns over Irans secret weaponization efforts united the world.
The goal that we have long sought, along with the international community, is to find out exactly what Iran accomplished in its clandestine program not necessarily to get Iran to declare culpability but to determine how far they had advanced their weaponization program so that we would know what signatures to look for in the future.
David Albright, a physicist and former nuclear weapons inspector, and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, said: Addressing the IAEAs concerns about the military dimensions of Irans nuclear programs is fundamental to any long term agreement an agreement that sidesteps the military issues would risk being unverifiable.
The reason he said that an agreement that sidesteps the military issues would be unverifiable, is because it makes a difference if you are 90 percent in terms of enriched material down the road in your weaponization efforts or only 10 percent advanced. It makes a big difference.
The state of Irans weaponization efforts significantly impacts the breakout time for the regime to complete an actual deliverable weapon.
So, this verifiability is critical. And in 2015, I explained the JCPOA did not empower international weapons inspectors to conduct the kind of anywhere, anytime inspections needed to get to the bottom of Irans previous weaponization program.
In February 2021, we saw the consequences of not insisting Iran permanently ratify the Additional Protocol.
Iran simply decided they were done with the Additional Protocol and refused to allow the IAEA to fully investigate locations where it found traces of uranium enrichment.
It is now obvious that the IAEA is significantly limited in its ability to determine the extent of Irans previous nuclear program and whether further militarization activities have continued all this time. Without the complete adoption of the Additional Protocol, the JCPOA did not empower the IAEA to achieve this task.
So that was then and this is now. And though I had my concerns with JCPOA, as I have expressed, I am also absolutely clear-eyed, as should everyone else in this chamber should be, that the way in which President Trump unilaterally withdrew from the deal, with no diplomatic plan for constraining Irans nuclear ambitions, without the support of any of our allies, without any kind of serious alternative, emboldened Iran to pursue its nuclear ambitions like never before.
Now, we cant live in a counterfactual world where all parties remained in full compliance, but we do know that even for the first couple years of the JCPOA, Irans leaders gave absolutely no indication they were willing to look beyond the scope of these limited terms, and fought vigorously to keep their highly advanced nuclear infrastructure in place.
That was under a more moderate regime.
They continued their destabilizing activities and support for terrorism in the greater Middle East with abandon. So today, I ask why we would try to simply go back to the JCPOA a deal that was not sufficient in the first place and still doesnt address some of the most serious national security concerns we have.
Let me lay out specific concerns about the parameters of the JCPOA, which it appears the Biden administration is seeking to reestablish.
For decades now, Iran has pursued all three elements necessary to create and to deliver a nuclear weapon.
Producing nuclear material for a weapon. The fissile material. That is basically what we just talked about being three to four weeks away.
The scientific research and development to build a nuclear warhead. Thats why we dont know the full dimensions of what they were doing in terms of how advanced they got to the weaponization, the ability to have the nuclear warhead that makes the bomb go boom.
The ballistic missiles to deliver them.That, they already had.
If you think about it, they have the missiles capable of delivering, they are on the verge of having the fissile material necessary to create an explosion. The only question is the warhead. At what point are they there? And we dont fully know.
Since the Trump administration exited the deal, Iran has installed more than 1,000 advanced centrifuges, enabling it to enrich uranium more quickly.
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Chairman Menendez: We Cannot Allow Iran to Threaten Us into a Bad Deal or an Interim Agreement that Allows it to Continue Building its Nuclear...