Michael Bennet: “I would like to speak on the agreement the P5+1 powers reached on Iran's nuclear program. I was an early cosponsor of…”

“I would like to speak on the agreement the P5+1 powers reached on Iran's nuclear program. I was an early cosponsor of the bill that gave Congress an opportunity to evaluate the agreement. Because of that legislation, we have had extensive discussion and debate. This Chamber has a history of voting on critical national security issues at a 60-vote threshold, and I would have preferred an up-or-down vote on the merits. But, as too often happens, politics have prevailed, and this will likely be the only vote we will have on this agreement. So this vote serves as the vote on the substance. In 2003, Iran was operating approximately 164 centrifuges and had virtually no enriched uranium. By 2009, when the current administration took office, Iran had between 4,000 and 5,000 centrifuges installed. Over the next few years, Congress passed increasingly tough sanctions that the administration, to its credit, set out to implement. As a member of the banking committee in 2010, I helped write and pass those sanctions. By 2013, even in the grasp of the toughest international sanctions regime, Iran's nuclear program had raced forward. The country had 19,000 centrifuges installed, 10 bombs worth of enriched uranium, and 2 to 3 months' breakout time to a bomb. The harsh reality is that today Iran stands on the threshold of a nuclear weapon. So we have to weigh the agreement against this set of facts.…”