Peter Roskam: “I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I want to tell you briefly about the Roskam amendment, which requires…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I want to tell you briefly about the Roskam amendment, which requires the President to provide Congress with a comprehensive report on Iran's usage of commercial aircraft for military and terrorist activity. You say to yourself, Mr. Chairman: Why do we need this? Why is this important? Here is why. There is an important American company that is actively talking to the Iranians about the possibility of selling aircraft to them. Here is the problem with that. Everybody--everybody--agrees that the Iranians are the world's largest state sponsor of terror; and therefore, it goes that if you give them something that is useful for military purposes--that is, aircraft--it is fungible, and it can be used for any purpose. The notion that the Iranians are going to use Boeing aircraft, for example, simply to transport people on vacation back and forth within Iran is profoundly naive. So what this amendment does is it puts the aircraft industry on notice and it puts the Iranians on notice that we are very interested in what they are doing with commercial aircraft, for what purpose.”