Political Quotes

“I appreciate my colleague. We have a lot of agreement in areas in Lebanon and other areas in the region that we work diligently together to be able to resolve--very, very difficult areas in this region. But I do want to say: Facts are stubborn things. When my colleague makes a statement that we can see what happens during the time of the JCPOA and we can see what happens during the time of sanctions, I am welcome to be able to look at those facts. During the time of the JCPOA, as I mentioned before, from 2015 to 2017, munitions fired against American troops in Iraq increased 341 percent. Many of those munitions were Iranian-provided. So to be able to say that there were no attacks on Americans during the JCPOA is just factually not correct. I can take you to a multitude of members of the U.S. military that will speak specifically of munitions that were fired on them and all kinds of improvised explosive devices created by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and shipped into Iraq to be able to attack them specifically during that time period. So it is not factually correct there were no attacks on Americans during the time of the JCPOA. In fact, all the folks that look at these issues saw that terrorism increased 183 percent during that time period. During the time of the sanctions, Iran suffered real consequences in their economy, including a dramatic drop in their own defense spending by 28 percent during that time period.…”