At a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing before the Congressional recess, Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) spoke about sanctions towards Iran.
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00:00My colleague left with his JCPOA binders. That would have been very helpful. We've got a small
00:05chair in the back that's a little bit wobbly and that's about the only thing you could have put
00:09under it to actually stabilize it since it did nothing to stabilize her on. Ms. Stroll, you
00:14really loved the quick fire, rapid fire stuff when it came to the Biden administration. I kind of
00:18want to follow suit here, if you will, and I want to make this quick. Did oil exportation increase
00:24under the Biden administration? Sanctions enforcement is an area that could have been
00:29improved. Did it increase under the Biden administration? Chinese purchases of discounted Iranian oil
00:36increased under the previous administration. Did Biden delist the Houthi rebels? Yes. Did that
00:41disrupt 12% of global trade through the Red Sea? The delisting itself was not the cause of the
00:46disruption of the global trade. Did the increase in actual attacks as a result of delisting the
00:49Houthis increase the amount of disruption of global trade through the Red Sea, resulting in 12% of
00:55global trade being disrupted? Iranian provision of support to the Houthis is part of the reason the
01:00unfreezing of assets and the increase of oil trade give more money to Iran to be able to fund
01:05proxy militias. I can't speak to the exact fungibility of the fire. I actually thought that was your job.
01:10Did the currency of the Iran, the real, go up in value versus the dollar during the time the Biden
01:16administration was in place? My colleague would be better positioned on that. I'll allow you to answer.
01:21Yes. Yes, it did. Because under max pressure, it's at about a million rial to the dollar,
01:27something they haven't seen in a long time. So I noticed that you had a lot of really quick
01:31rapid fire things in the previous administration, but not a whole lot when it came to the increase
01:35in maximum pressure that's actually resulted in the Iranian regime reducing the amount of attacks
01:41they have right now. Wasn't it the Biden administration who actually requested the IDF in
01:46Israel to launch themselves into a ceasefire for negotiations? I can't speak to the specifics
01:52of that. Well, the answer is yes. And had they done that, we wouldn't have eliminated Hassan
01:58Nasrallah of Hezbollah. We would not have eliminated Senwar. We would not have eliminated many of the
02:03actual terrorist organization leads that has basically been put in place and enforced to grow
02:09stronger as a result of the weakness that the administration had shown. Look what we have today.
02:13We talk all the time about how Russia is, we're so weak on Russia, but was it not the Trump
02:19administration actually removed us from the failed INF treaty? Something that no other administration was
02:23willing to do before? Was it not the JCPOA that both General Secretary Ban Ki-moon and Gutierrez
02:30said had been violated when Iran was still shipping mid-range ballistic missiles to the Houthis when
02:36they were launching against Saudi Aramco? This is preposterous to even assume that the Biden
02:43administration had done anything to prevent the enrichment of nuclear or that the JCPOA or
02:48Jake Sullivan or any of the others had done anything that would have weakened the regime.
02:53And I want to be very clear. There is a difference, and I think it's important to always point out the
02:58differentiation in this. There is a difference in the regime and the Iranian people. The Iranian
03:03people want a free Iran. I can tell you that those who are bravely protesting in the streets,
03:09those who are continuing to try and risk their lives every single day, like Masa Amini did, to say enough is
03:15enough, shouldn't be lumped in. So when our colleagues very recklessly just says Iran, I think that that's a
03:24very big big misnomenclature, and I want to correct that for the record. I want to go into sanction enforcement.
03:30Do you feel, Ms. Youngman, that sanctions were enforced under the Biden administration?
03:38Not until late 2024.
03:40And do you feel that Iran is at a stronger or weaker position right now than they were previously?
03:47As a result of the sanctions that have been rolled out over the last few months, and at the end of 2024,
03:52they are weaker, but not as weak as they could have been if sanctions were fully enforced under the
03:57Biden administration. Completely agreed. And what I noticed from Iran is that not only are they
04:02concerned about this administration more so than the last, they've actually moved and relocated their
04:07service to air missiles around Qom, around the Tans, around Esfahan, because they know that unlike the
04:13Obama-Biden drawn red line, that this administration has actually proven to take real enforcement.
04:20Do you think, Mr. Norman, that if we actually, not actually hurting or impacting or having a lot of
04:25collateral damage as you would if you hit cities like Tehran or others, but when after the nuclear
04:29facilities, that would send a direct message to the regime that we will not continue to play weak with
04:35them? It certainly would send a powerful message to the regime that we would take, that we would
04:42not play weak with them, sir. And I think that that's really what this administration has proven,
04:46both in the first administration and now, is that we're not going to continue to play weak
04:51with our adversaries. The China-Russia-Iran-North Korea geopolitical alignment has grown stronger
04:56on the previous regime, and it's President Trump and this administration who continue to try and
05:00make the necessary steps to enforce sanctions, to guarantee that we relist the Houthis, to stop the
05:05sea of navigation from being disrupted, and to actually, for once and for all, actually see that
05:11the Iranian people have support from the United States to overthrow a regime that's been
05:15detainership, tyrannical, and continue to do this, but only build and build themselves under the Biden
05:20administration. With that, I will now recognize, if it pops up here, and I'm not sure that they're
05:27updating it. There we go. We will recognize the gentle lady from Pennsylvania, Ms. Dean.
05:44There we go. I'm going to slide down one.