WASHINGTON – Yesterday, U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, questioned U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on the nuclear deal reached with Iran.
“In my years as an attorney for a corporation, I would often get handed a big complex deal by optimistic business units that believed they’d launched a new marriage, a new partnership, and my job was to review it not with the wedding bells ringing in my ears, but with the likely divorce day in the picture before me. Because, frankly, no one ever pulled those agreements out again, unless there was a violation, or there was a disappointment, or there was a break down in the relationship,” said Senator Coons. “As I look not at the spin or the politics of this agreement, but as I dig into the substance of it, it is an agreement built on distrust. It is a wedding day where the bride is shouting, ‘I hate you and your family,’ and the groom is shouting, ‘I distrust you and you’ve always cheated on me,’ and each is announcing their distrust really of the other at the outset.”
Transcript of Senator Coons’ questioning below:
SENATOR COONS: “Thank you Chairman Corker and Ranking Member Cardin for convening this important hearing, and I’d like to thank all three of our witnesses for your service to our nation and for your testimony here today. I think we all share a simple, basic premise, which is that the United States must not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. A nuclear-armed Iran would threaten our national security, our vital ally Israel, and the stability of the entire Middle East. And so in the next two months I will review the details of this nuclear agreement, and consider its ramifications for our nation and for the region. I’ll compare it to the alternatives, and support it only if I’m convinced it sufficiently freezes every Iranian pathway to a nuclear weapon.
“In my years as an attorney for a corporation, I would often get handed a big, complex deal by optimistic business units that believed they’d launched a new marriage, a new partnership, and my job was to review it not with the wedding bells ringing in my ears, but with the likely divorce day in the picture before me. Because, frankly, no one ever pulled those agreements out again, unless there was a violation, or there was a disappointment, or there was a break down in the relationship. As I look not at the spin or the politics of this agreement, but as I dig into the substance of it, it is an agreement built on distrust. It is a wedding day where the bride is shouting, “I hate you and your family,” and the groom is shouting, “I distrust you and you’ve always cheated on me,” and each is announcing their distrust really of the other at the outset. And I do wonder what the alternative is given that disagreement here seems inevitable. So let me turn to the wedding guests, and a question about how that may play out.
“A key piece of this agreement is the Joint Commission. A joint commission that has 8 representatives: P5 + 1, and the European Union and Iran. They will resolve access disputes, and they are a key piece of how we would get access to undisclosed sites. And if Iran doesn’t sufficiently answer IAEA concerns about a suspect facility within a certain number of days, there is a consensus vote, and so forth. But our confidence about our ability to resolve disputes under this agreement depends on the reliability of those votes.
“I don’t mean to impugn the partnership of our vital allies who have gotten us to this point, but I am concerned that CEOs from many European nations are already heading to Tehran, and talking about significant economic relationships. Should we be nervous about the votes in the future on that Joint Commission of the EU or our other allies, given what will be, I suspect, significant economic interests that might inspire them to either direct the EU to vote against access or block access for us? How confident can we be of our allies enduring support of our interests in the, I think, likely event of cheating?”
SECRETARY KERRY: “I think we can be very confident, and here’s the reason why: The access issue goes to the core, the absolute core of this agreement, which is preventing them from getting a weapon. And if we have sufficient information, intelligence, input shared among us - by the way, we share all this information; and by the way, Israel will be feeding into that, the Gulf States will be feeding into that. When we have any indicator that there is a site we need to get in to, and we’re all, we’ve shared that amongst each other, we’re in agreement – this goes to the heart of this entire agreement. They will prosecute that. They will understand the circumstances.
“And by the way, there is a converse, you know, there is another side of that coin about the economic interests. You have a young generation of Iranians who are thirsty for the world. They want jobs, they want a future. Iran has a huge stake in making sure there isn’t an interruption in that business, and that they are living up to his agreement. So if in fact, when you’re way beyond the 15 years, if we find there is a reason for us to have suspicion under the additional protocol, and we can’t get in, the United States alone, for the duration of the agreement, has the ability to snap back in the UN by ourselves.
“We always have the ability to put our sanctions back in place. And given our position in the world - and that’s not going to change in the next ten, 15 years economically – we are still the most powerful economy in the world – we will have the ability to have an impact on their transactions and ability to do business. So we believe we are very well protected here, Senator Coons, because we created a one-nation ability to go to the Security Council and affect snapback.”
SEN. COONS: “If I could follow up on that, Mr. Secretary. The snapback sanctions that we can affect through the UN Security Council, are they the broad sweeping financial sector sanctions that we worked on together that brought Iran to the table? Or are they a paler version of that?”
SEC. KERRY: “Oh no no, they are the full monty.”
SEN. COONS: “Because as you know, we’ve had debate among some of the colleagues on this committee about whether or not this agreement prevents the re-imposition…”
SEC. KERRY: “Well, we do have some discretion. I mean language is in there that says “in whole” or “in part.” Now if we find there is some minor something and we want to slap the wrist, we can find an “in part.” So that’s up to us.”
SEN. COONS: “So in your view, we have the ability to ratchet back sanctions in pieces or in whole?”
SEC. KERRY: “If needed, or in whole.”
SEN. COONS: “Let me, if I might, turn to Secretary Moniz in the time I have left. About centrifuge development – I will articulate the question and then if you would have an answer for me… How long did it take Iran to master the IR1 centrifuge? What’s the difference in performance between the IR1 and the IR8? And how long do you think it will take Iran, given the restrictions of this agreement if observed, to master the IR6 and 8? And then what would the impact be on their ability to enrich after years ten to 15?"
SECRETARY MONIZ: “So Senator Coons, first of all, the IR1, of course, they’ve been working on for quite some time, and they have some challenges still. The terms of the R&D and the more advanced machines. Of course, first of all, the program does substantially shift back in time their program plans. Where they are today is the IR6 that you mentioned is, let’s say, seven or eight times more powerful than the IR1, and they are already spinning small cascades of that with uranium. The IR8, which is projected to be maybe 15 times more powerful, is at the mechanical testing stage only. That’s what got frozen in the interim agreement.”
SEN. COONS: “So if I might in closing, Mr. Chairman, it would be perfectly reasonable to expect that on a ten year time horizon, the IR6 and 8 - which they’ve already, they’re already testing cascades of the 6, they’ve already got mechanical testing of the 8 underway - it would be reasonable to expect that a decade from now they’d be 15 times better, faster at their enrichment, but not 100 times?”
SEC. MONIZ: “No, we don’t believe that they will have, with this schedule we don’t think that they will be anywhere near ready for industrial scale deployment of those machines, certainly not in the decade and for some years thereafter.”
SEN. COONS: “Thank you Mr. Chairman.”