Video: Kaine Delivers Speech On Trump-Vance Administration’s Deal with Iran

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), a member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, spoke on the Senate floor regarding the Trump-Vance Administration's memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the United States and Iran.

A video of Kaine's full speech is available here.

"If more war with Iran were the answer, we would have found it a long time ago," Kaine said. "I took to the floor of the Senate immediately after the President started this war to say the war was illegal because he had not consulted with Congress before waging it. The war was foolish because 25 years of war in the Middle East should have taught us something. And the war was likely to lead to very, very significant negative consequences for the United States, and that has, in fact, happened."

"I am very thankful that we found an off-ramp to this war," Kaine continued. "I pray that the negotiation and the end of the war will hold."

"But I want to remind everybody who was paying attention to this-that there was a different path, and it was a path of diplomacy," Kaine said. "President Obama and his team-especially Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Energy Ernie Moniz-worked over the course of many years to find an Iranian nuclear deal to control Iran's nuclear ambitions."

"When Donald Trump became President in 2017, he said he wanted to destroy the Obama nuclear deal… He set out to do what no American President had ever done… President Trump tore up the deal," said Kaine. "Many of us in the Senate said 'if you tear up this deal and make diplomacy impossible, you will make war inevitable. American troops are likely to die if you destroy diplomacy.' And that has now proven to be true."

Kaine then went on to compare Obama-Biden Administration's JCPOA with the Trump-Vance Administration's MOU.

"The JCPOA language talks about forever, and the Trump MOU does not," Kaine said, comparing the first clause about nuclear weapons from the JCPOA and MOU. "Why did Donald Trump tear up the forever promise? Why did Donald Trump prefer going to war than getting a forever promise to avoid war and save lives and save taxpayer money?"

Kaine discussed the differences on centrifuge limits, enrichment limits, nuclear weapons research, uranium destruction, and inspections. He also talked about the differences in sanctions relief on Iran, including how the JCPOA relieved only nuclear sanctions on Iran and included a snapback provision upon any violation of the deal whereas the Trump-Vance MOU terminates all sanctions. He discussed Iranian assets, oil, U.S. payments to Iran, engagement with other countries, and the fact that the JCPOA had a dispute resolution mechanism and the MOU does not.

Finally, Kaine discussed the Strait of Hormuz, saying, "The MOU says that Iran and Oman will administer traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, will develop a plan to do so, and the plan has to be in accord with international law. The United States has never said that before-acknowledged the power, acknowledged the right of Iran to be the administrator of the Strait of Hormuz. The JCPOA certainly didn't recognize Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz, but the memorandum of understanding does, and I believe that poses a very, very severe risk of continued choke points in the Strait in ways that can harm global commerce and ultimately harm American families."

"Let's compare the forever deal that Donald Trump tore up that led us to an illegal and foolish war to the memorandum that he just announced yesterday," Kaine continued. "It ain't hard."

"When you make a mistake in something like this, people lose their lives who shouldn't-troops, children, innocent bystanders," Kaine said. "Our military is the best in the world, and when it comes to operations, they perform the best in the world, and they only problem they ever get into is when they're subject to decisions by civilian leaders that are stupid."

"I believe the history of this Iran war is going to be written, and the history is going to start with the decision to tear up a forever diplomatic deal, to walk away from diplomacy, which is something the U.S. never should do," Kaine continued. "The tearing up of that deal was essentially lighting the spark that led to an unnecessary war and to unnecessary death."

"An off-ramp to an illegal and stupid war is still something to be applauded. My prayer is that this holds, as weak as it is compared to what we had, and as tragic as it is that we've incurred the losses we've incurred because we decided to walk away from diplomacy, I hope it holds. I hope it holds, and we put behind us needless U.S. wars in the Middle East, and we invest those billions of dollars in our own people, in our own schools, in our own health care system, instead of foolishly waging unnecessary and illegal wars far from home," Kaine concluded. "We gave an awful lot more to get an awful lot less than what we had and foolishly destroyed when President Trump walked out of a diplomatic deal that was working."

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