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Washington, D.C. – Just before Senate Democrats blocked a vote on the Obama Administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) spoke on the Senate floor today about the repercussions of allowing the deal to stand and the threat it poses to America and its future generations.
A transcript of Rubio’s full remarks is available below. A video of Rubio’s remarks is available here. For television stations interested in airing today’s speech, a broadcast quality video is available here.
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio
Senate Floor Speech
September 10, 2015
http://bit.ly/1iAh3X8
Senator Marco Rubio: “I’ll be brief. I know the senator from Tennessee would like to close on this matter. I think everything that needs to be said about the details of this deal have already been said.
“I do want to be recorded for history’s purposes, for I know what is going to happen with regards to this, if it goes through. Iran will immediately use the money it is receiving in sanctions relief to begin to build up its conventional capabilities. It will establish the most dominant military power in the region outside of the United States and it will raise the price of us operating in the region. They’re going to build anti-access capabilities, rockets capable of destroying our aircraft carriers and ships, continue to build these swift boats that are able to come on us, these fast boats that are able to swarm our naval assets, and they’ll make it harder and harder for U.S. troops to be in the region.
“They’ll also work with other terrorist groups in the region to target American service men and women, and they may or may not deny that they’re involved but they will target us and raise the price of our presence in the Middle East until they hope to completely pull us out of that region.
“They’ll also continue to build long-range missiles, missiles capable of reaching the United States. Those are not affected by this deal, and they’ll continue to build them as they have been doing.
“And then, at some point in the near future, when the time is right, they will build a nuclear weapon, and they will do so because at that point they will know that they have become immune, that we will no longer be able to strike their nuclear program because the price of doing so will be too high.
“This is not just a work of imagination. It exists in the world today. It’s called North Korea, where a lunatic possesses dozens of nuclear weapons and a long-range rocket that can already reach the United States. And we cannot do anything about it. An attack on North Korea today would result in an attack on Tokyo or Seoul or Guam or Hawaii or California. And so the world must now live with a lunatic in possession of nuclear weapons.
“And this is the goal Iran has as well ? to reach a point where they become immune to any sort of credible military threat because the price of a military strike would be too high. And then they become an established nuclear weapons power. And never in the history of the world has such a regime ever possessed weapons so capable of destruction. Iran is led by a Supreme Leader who is a radical Shia cleric with an apocalyptic vision of the future. He is not a traditional geopolitical actor who makes decisions on the basis of borders or simply history or because of ambitions. He has a religious apocalyptic vision of the future, one that calls for triggering a conflict between the non-Muslim world and the Muslim world, one that he feels especially obligated to trigger. And he’s going to possess nuclear weapons?
“This is the world that we are on the verge of leaving our children to inherit, and perhaps we ourselves will have to share in.
“So I want to be recorded for history’s purposes, if nothing else, to say that those of us who oppose this deal understood where it would lead, and we are making a terrible mistake. And I fear that passage of this deal will make it even harder for us to prevent it.
“And I hope there’s still time for us to change our minds, but here’s the good news: Iran may have a Supreme Leader, but America does not. In this nation we have a republic, and soon we will have new leaders, perhaps in this chamber, but also in the executive branch. And I pray that on their first day in office they will reverse this deal and reimpose the sanctions and back them up with a credible threat of military force, or history will condemn us for not doing what needed to be done at this critical moment in the world’s history.”