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Sen. Sessions Debates Russian Aid
Friday, February 8, 2008
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The junior Senator from Alabama is recognized.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, it is great to be with my colleague, Senator Nelson. His great knowledge of space and military defense issues is very valuable to this country. He chairs the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces in the Armed Services Committee, in addition to his NASA work on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. I value his leadership and expertise, and I am going to share some thoughts that dovetail nicely with one of the points he was making about U.S. reliance on Russia as a legitimate partner.
We desired and hoped as a nation that the fall of the Soviet Union would usher in a new period of cooperation with Russia. We hoped they would be a legitimate partner with us in improving both of our nations, and the world. We have the capability to create a partnership that can foster progress, prosperity, and peace in the world. But the reality is that a lot of things are happening to cause us great concern. We as a nation are going to have to face up to the fact that the Russians are not reliable. They may not be reliable as a partner in space; they certainly are not reliable in helping to contain the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
So we have some big issues facing us, and I thank the Senator from Florida for at least raising that point about space.
Let me quote from yesterday's New York Times, an article by Matthew Wald entitled: ``U.S.-Backed Russian Institutes Help Iran Build Reactor.'' The headline alone is hard to believe.
This article begins:
The Energy Department is subsidizing two Russian nuclear institutes that are building important parts of a reactor in Iran whose construction the United States spent years trying to stop, according to a House committee.
The article goes on:
The institutes, both in Nizhny Novgorod, gave American officials copies of sales presentations that listed the Bushehr reactor, which Russia has agreed to fuel, as one of their projects. One institute is providing control systems, including control room equipment, and the other hundreds of pumps and ventilation fans. The Energy Department is subsidizing the institutes under the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention, a program set up in 1994 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The program was intended to prevent newly impoverished scientists and their institutions from selling expertise to States or terrorist groups that want nuclear weapons.
A good goal, for sure.
The article goes on:
The United States supplements the salaries of scientists and pays overhead at those institutes, according to the House Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee. It was not immediately clear whether the Energy Department was contributing to the salaries of the very scientists involved in the Bushehr reactor project. Two Michigan Democrats--Representatives John D. Dingell, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Bart Stupak, chairman of the Committee's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee--asked that question in a letter sent on Wednesday to the Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.
The article quotes their letter saying this:
What policy logic justifies the Department of Energy funding Russian institutes which are providing nuclear technology to Iran?
Pretty good question. It goes on to ask this additional question:
How does this advance our nonproliferation goals?
So I salute our House colleagues, Democratic Chairman Dingell and Congressman Stupak for asking these questions. The U.S. is going to have to grow up and acknowledge some things are happening within Russia that are not positive. We wish it were not so. We wish we could be in better shape with Russia today, and it is most discouraging and troubling that we are not.
I had the opportunity to visit the Nizhny Novgorod region in the early 1990s before I was a Senator. We spent about 2 weeks there living with some wonderful Russian people. It was an exceedingly informative and wonderful trip and I value the relationships we built at that time.
But the Government of Russia is on a dangerous track now, I am afraid. We might as well begin to talk about it. Congressmen Dingell and Stupak's letter notes that in October 2007, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran concluded:
Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons if a decision is made to do so.
If we will remember, the National Intelligence Estimate was written by a committee headed by State Department persons, not professional intelligence officers, who concluded that the Iranians were not attempting to build a nuclear bomb. But in that report they did note that Tehran is pushing forward aggressively with creating a nuclear reactor to generate electricity, despite the fact that Iran sits on an untold wealth of natural gas and oil. Also, the report buried the fact that learning how to enrich fuel for use in nuclear reactors is by far the most important step in building a nuclear bomb. If you can handle that problem, it takes you very little time to create a nuclear weapon.
Mr. Dingell and Mr. Stupak go on to quote Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2006 saying:
The United States faces no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran.
So the Congressmen say this in their letter to Secretary of Energy Bodman:
Given these dire warnings, it is troubling that the Department of Energy would subsidize or otherwise support Russian entities providing technology and services to the Iranian nuclear program.
I would agree. This is not the first time this issue has been discussed. In December 21 of last year, Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, wrote in the Weekly Standard online that:
Perhaps the only thing more disappointing than Moscow's shipment this week of lightly enriched uranium to fuel the power reactor in Bushehr in Iran was Bush's endorsement of it.
Mr. Sokolski quoted President Bush as saying:
If the Russians are willing to do that, [supply the uranium,] which I support, then the Iranians do not need to learn how to enrich.
So this apparently is a continuation of a State Department tendency to excuse problems with Iran and Russia. And the President apparently was making a comment consistent with that view. The article goes on to state:
Technically, this will only bring Tehran closer to getting a bomb. If the fuel is diverted and used as fresh feed for Iran's uranium enrichment centrifuges at Natanz it could dramatically reduce the time and effort needed to make a bomb's worth of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium.
Russia shipped 82 tons of lightly enriched uranium. At any time while it is loading the fuel, Tehran can seize it and have enough uranium to feed its centrifuges at Natanz to make up to 150 crude nuclear weapons.
Former Under Secretary of State, John Bolton, repeatedly detailed his concern over Russo-Iranian cooperation in testimony and speeches. Now that he has left the Department, it looks as though people have decided to sweep the matter under the rug.
For an illustration of how dramatically our policy as shifted since Mr. Bolton's departure, listen to this statement from a State Department press briefing in January 2003:
``We believe that President Putin shares our deep concern at the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. We have made clear to Russia that any further nuclear cooperation with Iran, including construction of additional power reactors, will assist directly or indirectly Iran's ambitious request for nuclear weapons.''
So back in 2003, we were more alert to the danger posed by the Bushehr project, and we were stating the unvarnished facts about it. This kind of activity could only assist, directly or indirectly, Iran's ambitious quest for nuclear weapons.
The State Department spokesman went on to say:
We underscored to Russia that an end to Russia's nuclear assistance to Iran would allow the United States and Russia to reap the full promise of our new strategic relationship, benefitting Russia economically and strategically far more than any short-term gain from construction of additional reactors or other sensitive transfers to Iran.
And then he went on to suggest and state:
If the Russians end their sensitive cooperation with Iran, we have indicated we would be prepared to favorably consider such transfers of spent fuel back to Russia--
That now cannot be done legally without our accord--
an arrangement worth potentially several billion U.S. dollars in revenue to Moscow.
So we had a carrot and a stick there. It looks as if it was not a very good offer because the Russians did not accept it. They completed their work at Bushehr.
Now, with regard to the question of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, I believe that it created the very damaging false impression that the
Iranians had no interest in going forward with creating a nuclear weapon. That was the headline that the press drew out of it. The Estimate, I believe, was written and designed to create that headline. And the people who wrote it should be held to account for the misapprehension they have created.
The NIE was done by a team under Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Michael McConnell, and I guess he did review it, as did General Michael Hayden at CIA. But neither one of them personally signed it as an absolute position of the DNI or the CIA. Admiral McConnell testified about this report at a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing the day before yesterday. He said this:
If I had 'til now to think about it, I probably would change a few things.
He later added:
I would change the way we describe the Iranian nuclear program. I would have included that there are the component parts, that the portion of it, maybe the least significant, had halted.
The portion of their nuclear weapons program that was halted was the portion which the intelligence community deemed least important; the most important part is still ongoing. I say that to say we are not in some academic exercise here. We are dealing with a rogue state, Iran, that has been determined to obtain nuclear weapons and has been working on it for years. The Iranians are receiving assistance from the Russians who, in turn, are receiving support and cooperation from us.
We are going to have to talk about this a good bit more as time goes by. But a lot of things are happening that are very troubling. As I said, I wish it were not so. For example, the Iranians tested a satellite launch vehicle earlier this week. On February 4, the Jerusalem Post reported that a successful satellite launch by the Iranians would lead to ``a dramatic improvement in their missile capability.'' Ahmadinejad was present at the launch site and gave orders to launch the rocket himself.
This is what he said:
Our presence in space is a necessity. Any country that respects itself should control the most advanced technology.
Does that include nuclear weapons?
We are grateful to God for witnessing the first and determined step toward an Iranian satellite.
The Iranians are spending a lot of their money on satellites and weapons systems and even nuclear weapons. That is a fact. So we are going to have to reevaluate our relationship with Russia in light of their ongoing assistance to Iran. That is a fact. I wish that things were different. They are not.
It is worth noting that there has been a string of belligerent and unwise actions by the Russians recently.
For example, in January of 2006, they cut off natural gas supplies to the Ukraine, a deliberate act to try to pressure the Ukraine's--their former satellite.
In May of 2007, Russian cyber-attacks shut down the Internet throughout Estonia, a former Russian satellite, now independent. Estonia has no desire whatsoever to be back as a part of the Soviet Union.
In August of 2007, Russian jet fighters invaded the airspace of the Republic of Georgia and dropped a missile on Georgian territory. Georgia is a free nation with elections and a highly intelligent leadership team, many of whom were educated in the United States. They absolutely have no desire to fall under the sway of the Russians again.
But this is the way that Putin behaves. Russia has supported the Georgian separatist movement. They have actively supported anti-Western opposition in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. They are ramping up their military spending dramatically when there is no perceived increase in the threat to Russia. What serious argument can be suggested that Russia is under military threat? From the EU? We cannot even get the EU to pull the trigger in Afghanistan.
Some of them will not even carry guns. They are not threatening Russia.
In the summer of 2007, Russia started bomber flights outside its territory encroaching on the airspace of the United Kingdom, Norway, and Guam. In September of 2007, Russia loudly announced the test of a superstrength conventional bomb. In October of 2007, Putin announced a ``grandiose plan'' to restore Russia's Armed Forces and develop new nuclear weapons. While we are dramatically reducing the number of nuclear weapons in our country, they are developing brand new weapons and testing missiles to evade U.S. missile defenses.
What about their relationship with Iran? Putin visited Iran in October and pledged enhanced Russian-Iranian cooperation, including on nuclear energy. Russia resumed work on the Bushehr reactor and provided Iran with enriched uranium to fuel it. Moscow also conducted major arms sales with Iran, China, Syria, and Venezuela, including fighter aircraft and antiaircraft missiles. With the Chinese, Russia has used the threat of a veto to water down and block meaningful U.N. action on Iran's illicit nuclear program.
One of the oddest Russian behaviors is their decision to trump up an issue over our perfectly legitimate and reasonable decision to build a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Putin says that our decision to go forward with this project is a tremendous threat to Russia, but there will only be ten defensive missiles stationed there. The interceptors are not designed in any way to defeat a Russian attack, which would involve hundreds of nuclear weapons. But, no, they are trumping up a dispute between the United States and Europe and Russia over this. Some say it is for domestic political consumption to help Putin consolidate his power. Whatever the reason, it is not healthy. This Nation has to wake up and be able to understand that Russia, fueled by all this new oil money and an increasingly autocratic regime under Mr. Putin, is not a healthy partner. We have to ask some real questions. Are they going to be a legitimate partner for a better world?
This article in yesterday's New York Times was very troubling to me and represents another example of confused thinking that may exist within the bowels of our Government regarding our relationship with Russia and with Iran. We have to be realistic and honest and accept the fact that things are not going well, that in many ways Russian activity grows darker and darker and less and less positive. They continue to expand their relationships with rogue states and bad actors, and frustrate the legitimate actions of the developing world to create a more prosperous economy and more peaceful world. We will probably talk about this more as time goes by. We might as well start right now, questioning how reliable Russia is as a partner.
Should we be participating in space programs with the Russians? Frankly, it has cost us more than we have gained from their assistance, experts say. So this partnership has mainly been a good way for the Russians to gain insight into our technologies, but it has not been an advantage to our space program. If we don't watch it, we will be dependent on them in a way that can keep us from following through on our goals for space.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Klobuchar). The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SESSIONS. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
