During a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) spoke about President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which would limit Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
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00:00from Pennsylvania. Ms. Dean.
00:20Thank you Mr. Chairman. Bear with me and let's restart the clock please. Restarted
00:28the clock. Thank you very much. I thank Chairman Mast and Ranking Member Meeks
00:31for holding this hearing and I thank all of you. Your expertise, your passion and
00:36your your intellect around these issues is very valuable to us in these
00:40incredibly challenging times. Going back to the JCPOA, in 2015 the P5 plus 1, the EU
00:50and Iran agreed to the JCPOA choosing diplomacy over aggression to ensure
00:57that Iran's nuclear program would be peaceful, constrained. The JCPOA was a
01:03historic deal in ensuring verification and compliance and the IAEA had previously
01:09warned that its failure would be a loss for nuclear verification and
01:14multilateralism. Unfortunately in 2018 even though the IAEA verified that Iran was
01:23implementing its nuclear related commitments, President Trump in my mind
01:27recklessly withdrew the United States from the JCPOA and without a plan as my
01:34colleague Mr. Schneider spoke about. Mr. Rule, I'd like to go back to the very
01:40beginning of your testimony. It is stunning testimony that I think bears repeating.
01:45You said in page 1 and page 2, first the IAEA notes that Iran continues to expand its
01:53production of 60% enriched uranium. Is that correct? That is correct ma'am. You say Iran
02:01appears capable of producing its first quantity of 90% enriched uranium. Can you speak to that? What
02:08leads us to know that? That is based on the International Atomic Energy Agency's
02:15access to Iran's nuclear program at present, which is limited but it still takes place.
02:21And when you use the expression, as experts do, they would have the possibility of 90% enriched uranium
02:28sufficient for one nuclear weapon in about a week. What does that about a week mean to the layman like me?
02:33Well, it means that they have centrifuges which spin gas and basically produce highly enriched uranium
02:42that would then have to be shaped into a warhead that could then be used as a weapon. This is the
02:51first stage of that. So this is before the warhead construction starts. So they don't have a weapon,
02:57they just have the material that would begin the process towards a weapon. So they don't have a bomb,
03:02but they have the fissile material that would then begin the process for a weapon.
03:08What stages were they at prior to President Trump removing the United States from JCPOA? What were the
03:16numbers then? They had a very, very tiny amount of enriched uranium at a level that was much,
03:25much reduced to this. It was about below 5%. They had a very small number of centrifuges. But I should
03:34also say, ma'am, that when President Trump left JCPOA, they did not significantly increase their
03:42centrifuge production until, frankly, diplomatic talks began under the Biden administration. And it wasn't
03:48because of the Biden administration itself. It was just because the Iranians just decided to expand their
03:53program, even when diplomacy was offered.
03:55And then you said, let me see here. Second, you said Iran continues to increase the number and
04:02sophistication of its centrifuge cascades. Can you speak to that a little bit?
04:07Yes. In essence, the centrifuges have, the more advanced the centrifuge is, the greater its efficiency,
04:14the faster it can produce highly enriched uranium. And what that means is the faster it can produce the
04:21fissile material for a weapon. And the faster it can produce something means the fewer number of
04:27centrifuges, which means the footprint is smaller. It means the smaller the installation can be,
04:33meaning the easier you can hide it. So in essence, Iran's nuclear architecture right now appears to be
04:40designed to produce the highest enriched uranium in the fastest way possible, and not the lowest
04:48enriched uranium in just an average speed possible. So it's not producing enriched uranium in a way that
04:56you would expect for a civilian nuclear program. It is also producing this enriched uranium in centrifuge
05:02cascades in facilities that are deeply buried, that look as if they're designed to survive a military attack.
05:09That is all very suspicious.
05:11Very suspicious. I see my time is up. Where does this leave our partners, our former partners in the JCPOA,
05:18if you could answer that?
05:20Well, the Europeans have been attempting to revive negotiations for some time without success, in part because the
05:26Iranians themselves refused to cooperate with negotiations as they refused to cooperate under the Biden administration,
05:33which is why then the Secretary of State and the Biden administration called the negotiations to an end.
05:40I thank you very much, all of you. I'm sorry I wasn't able to get to everybody. Thank you. I yield back.
05:45Thank you. At this time, we recognize our good friend from Texas.