ICYMI: A Crucial Vote on a Somber Anniversary

Here in Washington, D.C., on this somber anniversary, my colleagues and I face a unique series of votes regarding a foreign policy pact like none I have encountered before. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a product of many months of negotiations between Obama Administration officials and other world leaders, will have a lasting impact well beyond this Congress and Obama's presidency. This international gamble will affect generations of Americans and Middle Easterners hoping to live in a more peaceful world.

The JCPOA threatens our national security interests at home and abroad by priming the Iranian Regime with monetary resources and nuclear technology assistance, and abandoning international arms embargos within the decade. This agreement has significantly more potential to initiate a war, costing many innocent lives, than the current sanctions program in place.

I have been resolute in my position since reading the JCPOA. The terms of the plan indicate a reversal of a quarter century of nonproliferation policy regarding Iran that has successfully reined in their questionable ambitions. I followed the P5+1 negotiation and understood why we started this delicate process – a transparent and trustworthy Iranian nuclear program would yield a safer Middle East.

However, the negotiations have exposed that we are immeasurably far from the goal we intended to achieve. Under the current terms, we are not trading sanctions relief for complete cessation of the Iranian nuclear program, as initially intended. We are instead trading sanctions relief and the lifting of internal arms embargos for a temporary delay in Iran achieving the nefarious nuclear ambitions it's been seeking all along.

At the outset, this agreement assumes trust in a regime that has continually hid parts of its nuclear program, is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, and commits numerous human rights violations against its own citizens. Any deal with Iran should require stringent transparency, monitoring programs, and an immediate acknowledgement of past enrichment activities. This JCPOA fails in that regard by relying on nonpublic IAEA monitoring agreements.

The JCPOA also fails to establish an acceptable balance of consequences for violations of the agreement. With only one punishment for noncompliance, (to reimpose international sanctions) we are forced to make an ultimate decision at every instance of suspected Iranian non-performance. Small-to-medium scale Iranian noncompliance likely will not incentivize international imposition of United Nations sanctions. Due to this vagueness, the Iranian regime will be free to test the bounds of international leniency while the international community will likely turn a blind eye to anything short of egregious violations.

Moreover, the agreement includes various sections that appear to strengthen the Iranian regime economically via international trade and technology assistance. Section 29 asserts that signees "will refrain from any policy specifically intended to directly and adversely affect the normalization (sic) of trade and economic relations with Iran." Section 33 states that the signees and Iran, "will agree on steps to ensure Iran's access in areas of trade, technology, finance and energy." It boggles the mind to understand why the Obama Administration would help strengthen these critical sectors of the rogue regime even while the mullahs continue to fund Hamas and Hezbollah and destabilize Syria, Yemen, and the whole region. The concessions within this agreement are woefully unbalanced, and we owe it to future generations not to concede at this critical moment.

Both the House and Senate have held multiple hearings on the JCPOA in recent weeks, gathering testimony from Secretary of State Kerry and other high ranking Administration officials. What we have learned is that distrust of the agreement is one thing that transcends partisan differences. Both the Republican Chairman of the Middle East and South Asia Subcommittee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and her Democratic counterpart, Ranking member ,Ted Deutch have expressed skepticism with the JCPOA. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen remarked how similar this feels to our 2008 gamble with North Korea, hanging concessions on the hope and desire that notorious regimes can change for the good. We must learn from our recent past – notorious regimes do not deserve our unfounded optimism."

In July, Congressman Ted Deutch focused his questions on the possible military dimensions of Iran's nuclear program and the stringency of IAEA inspections. His questions elicited an admission from Secretary Kerry that we know that Iran was engaged in trying to make a weapon in 2003. Twelve years later, instead of reinforcing sanctions that have tied the hands of a nuclear weapon seeking regime, we are about to free up money and allow weapons sales to make that desire a reality.

I wrote in March of this year that domestic politics should not distill the danger that a bad deal would provide. This is not a partisan battle over resources or spending. This is a decision that will have lasting effects for the entire world in the long term, and short term effects on our ally Israel and the hundreds of thousands of long suffering Syrians and Iraqis targeted by Tehran and its proxies. President Obama has promised he would not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. The JCPOA does not keep that promise to the American people, our allies, and the rest of the world.

We must do everything we can to prevent implementation of this JCPOA, and remain firm by defending freedom and protecting American interests at home and abroad. That is why I promise to vote against implementing this Iran deal.

To read online, click here.