John Cornyn: “we are back in the Senate and kicking off a new year, which will undoubtedly be busy and certainly challenging. There is…”

“we are back in the Senate and kicking off a new year, which will undoubtedly be busy and certainly challenging. There is a lot of work for us to do, and one of our most crucial tasks is to address the national security supplemental appropriations bill that President Biden has requested. As you know, that bill includes relief for not only Israel but also additional assistance to Ukraine and provides additional money for the Indo- Pacific--hopefully to deter potential Chinese aggression in that region--and, of course, the border, which is another story for another day. But today, I would like to talk about the challenges we face in the Middle East. Today, the global threat environment is unlike any we have seen in recent memory, perhaps in our lifetime. I just returned from a trip to the Middle East with a bipartisan group of colleagues from the Senate Intelligence Committee. We had an extremely busy schedule, but it was very productive. We had 22 separate meetings with leaders across the region, from Jordan to Saudi Arabia, to Israel. We also had the opportunity, as I indicated, to travel to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Minister of Defense, Galant, and also members of the intelligence community there in Tel Aviv--the Shin Bet, which is responsible for domestic security, and, of course, Mossad, the legendary intelligence agency of the Israeli Government.…”