On the recordJuly 13, 2016
this week we are marking the 1-year anniversary of the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. This week, 1 year ago, my colleagues and I began the enormous task of reading, analyzing, and making a decision about whether or not we would support the deal. For me, that task took 6 weeks of careful study, several classified briefings, countless meetings with experts and conversations with constituents. As I wrote, on September 1 last year, ``This agreement will substantially constrain the Iranian nuclear program for its duration, and compared with all realistic alternatives, it is the best option available to us at this time.'' We were under no delusions that the JCPOA would be a panacea for all of our problems with Iran. Rather, it was envisioned and designed to meaningfully address one major issue: Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability. In my decision, I wrote, ``We need not, and indeed should not, trust the Iranian regime.'' On the 1-year anniversary of the deal, that statement remains true. One of the strengths of the JCPOA is a robust, arguably unprecedented, monitoring and verification mechanism. We need to fully fund the International Atomic Energy Agency in support of its efforts to monitor Iran's compliance with the JCPOA; that is why I supported an increase to the U.S. voluntary contribution to the IAEA in this year's budget. We also need to see greater transparency from the IAEA.…
