Ben Cardin

Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this meeting on defeating Iran's threat network options for countering Iranian proxies.

There is no administration, whether the Obama administration or the Bush administration, that wouldn't like to see Congress go away.

Let's be honest, we would have already passed legislation here, but the fact is the administration is pushing back against any legislation.

But the question is, where do we set the priorities, and how do we draw those lines, and under what conditions?

The question is where do we draw the line, and what are our priorities?

I do not think there is any disagreement here about enforcing our sanctions for non-JCPOA activities.

The most important thing that Congress can do is reestablish American deterrence.

I very much agree with your comments I think in total.

I think we have to be very strategic as to how we deal with new sanctions legislation.

I wanted to understand, because I hear they were not happy about Congress taking action.

I think we could probably get that completed.

I would hope through the leadership of this committee and through others, we could get that done.

Third, of course, is that we know Iran, one of its major targets is Israel, so making clear our commitment to Israeli security seems to me another matter that becomes a very important fact of congressional policy.

Another thing we can do, and this became very clear to me in my visits to the gulf states, is that we have an articulated regional strategy to protect our allies in the region.

We act through passing legislation, and we act by oversight. Both are critically important, and both led up to the types of negotiations that were possible in regards to the Iran nuclear agreement.

I think what we are really focusing on is what is the appropriate role for Congress in accomplishing our objective to change Iranian behavior, whether its nuclear proliferation or whether its support of terrorism or whether its ballistic…

Since this agreement was signed, the Iranian Government has continued ballistic missile testing activities.

This is a historic day, the 1-year anniversary of the signing of the JCPOA.

Obviously, it would be preferred to have the Security Council take action against Iran for its missile violations.

It seems to me that a missile defense system modernization from Russia to Iran makes it much more challenging for us to deal with the security concerns of our partners in that region.

I would just urge you to be aggressively working with us to set up the appropriate statutory framework to make it clear to Iran that we will not tolerate ballistic missile violations.

I think gives us a stronger position.

I would just urge you to go back and take a look at the congressional record from when we passed the sanction regime in 2010 and look at what has happened since and how absolutely essential it was for congressional action in 2010 to lead…

Having that as a backstop as we go beyond 2016 would seem to me to be critically important for U.S. leverage.

I will not support any congressional action that is out of compliance with the JCPOA.