At a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing before the Congressional recess, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) spoke about Iran and the Trump administration.
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00:00I now recognize Representative Moskowitz from Florida for five minutes.
00:04Thank you, Madam Chairman.
00:06I want to thank Chairman Lawler and Chairman Maas for bringing this hearing.
00:13You know, I have supported for months now giving the Iranians a period of time to end their nuclear program peacefully
00:21or that the United States should end it for them.
00:24However, I've worked with Chairman Lawler on that in the last Congress, dealing with Iranian oil.
00:32And in this Congress, Senator Lindsey Graham and I filed a resolution to get a sense of Congress on just that issue.
00:38Iran is weaker now than they've been in a very long time.
00:43Weaker in the region because of Israel's efforts against Hamas and Hezbollah,
00:48this administration's intervention on the Houthis.
00:52Now is the time.
00:53There's no question now is the time to try to bring this to a peaceful solution, right?
00:59And that's really up to the Iranians to choose what path they want to go.
01:04But I also have to recognize that we're in the third month of the administration.
01:11And for three months now, the administration has treated Canada and Greenland and Europe and Ukraine
01:18and PBS and NPR and the Associated Press worse than they've talked and treated Iran.
01:26I mean, three months in, they've just noticed all of a sudden that perhaps we should turn our attention to Iran
01:33instead of these distractions of, oh, we're going to get Gaza or Canada is going to be the 51st state or, oh, Greenland.
01:40And I mean, this is the opportunity.
01:44And it's an opportunity, quite frankly, for the administration that's been very partisan over the last few months to do something on a bipartisan basis.
01:50But I'm also deeply worried about the vice president.
01:54If we look at the text messages on Signal for SignalGate, the vice president seems to be against striking the Houthis.
02:05Well, if he's against striking the Houthis, then, I mean, where is he going to be on striking Iran if they don't choose a peaceful solution?
02:14Obviously, he's the vice president.
02:16The president makes the final decision.
02:18But if you look at that conversation, a deputy chief of staff had to weigh in from the White House,
02:25putting the vice president in his place, saying the president was clear on his direction.
02:30And so let me ask a question.
02:33And based on what you've seen, we've all seen publicly in that Signal chat,
02:38this isolationist trend that's going on in some, you know, circles of the Republican Party,
02:50Ms. Jugman, are you concerned that we may miss an opportunity to really curtail Iran's nuclear program?
02:59Because, again, if you look at what the vice president was saying with the Houthis, right,
03:04he clearly did not want to do the strike that the president had ordered.
03:12Thank you for that question.
03:13I think it is important to look at the efforts that the administration has done over the last three months,
03:18which includes designations on Iran, its ghost fleet, and a refinery in China.
03:23Yeah, but those are meaningless.
03:24The Biden administration, and I was critical of the Biden administration of these designations
03:28and non-enforcement of certain things.
03:31I mean, that was very critical when the Biden administration did not enforce the bill
03:34that Mike Lawler and I passed dealing with Iranian oil.
03:37And so, you know, we can sign executive orders for maximum pressure, but really, you know,
03:43this president is not shy.
03:45He's not shy.
03:46He tells us how he feels at all times.
03:48Okay.
03:49And so, you know, just last week, all of a sudden, we turned our attention to Iran,
03:55which I'm happy about.
03:56Better late than never.
03:58But there's something going on in this administration that you should all wake up to,
04:02that there is a wing led by the vice president that didn't want to strike the Houthis
04:10and probably doesn't want to curtail Iran's nuclear program.
04:14How are you going to deal with that?
04:18I don't see that from Treasury right now.
04:21I do think that there are efforts being made.
04:23And I think, you know, looking at the questions we've received, there isn't, you know,
04:28there's bipartisan consensus to go after Iran and the vice president alone doesn't.
04:32We have to be clear, right?
04:34Because Democrats have made this mistake.
04:36When you draw a red line and then you don't do it, we see problems.
04:40That's what happened in Syria under the Obama administration.
04:43So President Trump has drawn a red line.
04:45He has said either we're going to end it peacefully, which I hope we do.
04:49We all want that.
04:51Or the United States is going to end it.
04:53That's been said now.
04:55And that's what we have to hold the president to.
04:57I yield back.
05:01I now recognize Representative Issa.