Rescission of Certain Waivers and Licenses Relating to Iran

Floor Speech

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Mr. SELF. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1149, I call up the bill (H.R. 5947) to provide for the rescission of certain waivers and licenses relating to Iran, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

The Clerk read the title of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, this past weekend, we saw Iran unleash an unprecedented missile and drone attack on our ally Israel. Iran launched over 350 missiles and drones. We are incredibly fortunate that Israel, the United States, and other partners successfully intercepted 99 percent of those weapons. Had they not, the damage would have been catastrophic.

How did a regime that has been subject to international sanctions for decades have the resources to develop such advanced weaponry? The answer is that Iran is incredibly skilled at illicit finance, sanctions evasion, and exploiting every possible loophole to fund their malign activities.

Time and time again, we have allowed ourselves to accept the fiction that we can issue sanctions waivers that give Iran access to funds for limited use on allegedly humanitarian transactions without enabling the regime's malign activities.

We need to face facts. This is patently false.

Money is fungible, and the Iranian regime does not care about its people, as evidenced by their wide-scale human rights abuses and repression.

Under President Trump's maximum pressure campaign, Iran was starved for foreign reserve currency. This forced the Iranian regime to make hard choices.

With these waivers in effect, every dollar or euro that we provide the Iranian regime, even if purportedly for purchases of agriculture equipment or other humanitarian uses, frees up another dollar or euro that Iran's regime will spend on missiles, drones, its nuclear program, or its terrorist proxies.

Beyond the question of money being fungible, Iran has a demonstrated track record of falsifying humanitarian purchases.

In fact, the Department of Justice has previously charged a bank for ``facilitating transactions fraudulently designed to appear to be purchases of food and medicine by Iranian customers, in order to appear to fall within the so-called `humanitarian exception' to certain sanctions against the Government of Iran, when in fact no purchases of food or medicine actually occurred.''

Enough is enough. With this bill, H.R. 5947, we are eliminating the sanctions waivers tied to the $6 billion in Iranian funds in restricted accounts in Qatar and tied to the $10 billion Iran has received from Iraq in electricity payments. It is too dangerous to allow Iran continued access to these funds, even with the nominal restrictions on how they are used.

Again, returning our attention to the consideration of the bill at hand, H.R. 5947, Congress granted these waiver authorities over a decade ago hoping that they could be used to help the Iranian people without compromising our national security.

What we have seen in the last 10 years is that Iran cannot be trusted. These waivers failed. The JCPOA itself granted access to at least $50 billion to the primary sponsor of terrorism around the world.

Since then, we have seen some $70 billion at least given to the Iranian regime by the Biden administration.

Iran continues its dangerous, deadly buildup of weapons and other capabilities. The Iranian people continue to suffer at the hands of the regime which uses evasive tactics to divert money that should be spent on their people to support other malign activities.

Again, Iran is the primary sponsor of terror around the world, and now our partners and allies all over the Middle East are also victims of Iran and its proxies.

We have a responsibility to the freedom loving people of the Middle East not to be funding their oppressors. We need to revoke these waivers, and we need to do it today.

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Mr. SELF. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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