During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week, Sen. James Risch (R-ID) spoke about the Trump administration's policy towards Iran.
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00:00questions, and I'm going to start first, and I'm going to start with Mr. December, you and Mr.
00:05Rayburn. You know, when President Trump left office, we had around down to under 200,000
00:11barrels of oil a day that they were able to sell, which is really putting the hurt on them
00:16appropriately. And after that, it's gone up to almost 200, almost 2 million barrels a day.
00:28And now the President wants to turn the screw around again, and I'm all with him. Mr. DeSombre,
00:35Mr. Rayburn, both of you, I'd like to get your, understanding you haven't taken office yet,
00:39but I'd like to get your thoughts on that and how you might go about assisting in that regard.
00:45And again, I appreciate that you haven't taken office yet, but your thoughts, if you would,
00:49starting with you, Mr. Rayburn. Senator, thank you for that question. This is an important issue.
00:57The President has made it clear it's his policy to bring a maximum pressure approach back on the
01:04Iranian regime, particularly on its revenue streams driven by its oil exports. You are correct.
01:11In the first Trump administration, I was part of generating the apparatus that enforced those
01:19sanctions and was able to cut the flow of Iranian oil exports. That's by, for example, disrupting
01:26the ghost fleet of vessels that the Iranian regime uses, and then by engaging with our allies and
01:36partners and with the insurance sector, with the flagging countries, for example, in order to make it
01:43so that it's very difficult for the Iranian regime to physically move the oil, in addition to also
01:48enforcing sanctions on the financial side, so they're unable to move the money that goes along
01:54with those transactions. We had great results there, Senator, and I think that we can ramp that
01:59enforcement apparatus back up and repeat the performance.
02:03It's good news. We hope you can dust off that apparatus and hopefully crank it up a little bit
02:07and put the maximum pressure as possible. Mr. DeSombri, your thoughts?
02:12Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for that question. Clearly, implementing the maximum
02:16pressure campaign is something that does require efforts around the world. I believe 90 percent
02:21of oil exports from Iran go to China, and thus obviously stopping those exports and affecting that
02:27is something of critical importance. I believe just yesterday, the Secretary of State or the Department
02:31of State sanctioned individuals and entities in China and Hong Kong for their support of missile
02:35technology also in Iran, so that's also an area where there's an interplay between China and Iran.
02:40So these are critical issues, and it's an area where hopefully if I'm confirmed and if Joel
02:43Rayburn is confirmed, we can work together on these issues to deal with the nexus between China and Iran.
02:47We look forward to it. Thanks so much. Mr. Rayburn, I want to talk about Syria for a minute.
02:53You know, on December 8th when Assad fell, we all partied and felt well about it until we found out who it was that took over.
03:01Obviously, the new administration has a checkered past. Having said that, it is quite a ways in the past, number one.
03:12And number two, they started saying the right things and indeed doing the right things mostly since they took over.
03:17I think it's, I don't want to speak for the ranking member, but she and I have talked about this at some length,
03:22and we think this is an opportunity really to get in there.
03:28We have discussed this. We met with the foreign minister, the new Syrian foreign minister in Munich earlier this year
03:36and talked with him about their thoughts and plans and what have you.
03:40We have been pursued by all sides. Myself and this committee and Senator Shaheen were all instrumental in getting the CESAR sanctions put in place
03:51that we think were at least helpful in bringing Assad down.
03:55Now we're under pressure to do, we were under pressure to do the opposite of that and start removing them.
04:00We had actually written the president and asked him to relieve the sanctions,
04:06and now he has done that a little more robustly than we had in mind.
04:11Nonetheless, we're still in a wait and see.
04:14Those sanctions were taken off. They can be put back on, and we're going to continue to watch this.
04:20We really hope this works out. Syria is a proud country, long history.
04:25They have the ability to do this. Whether they can do it or not remains to be seen.
04:30But in any event, your thoughts on where we're headed there.
04:33Senator, thank you for raising this.
04:37I think the president is giving the Syrian people and the Syrian interim authorities a golden opportunity,
04:44a chance to rebuild after half a century under oppressive rule,
04:49and especially the debilitating war that they went through and where the people suffered,
04:54largely at the hands of the Assad regime and its Iranian and Russian and Hezbollah allies.
04:58He's giving them a chance to turn the page on that and chart a new course.
05:03He's also been very clear, as has Secretary Rubio, that there are expectations.
05:08As we move along the path, as the United States moves along the path of giving them this opportunity,
05:15the president has certain expectations.
05:18Secretary Rubio has laid out certain expectations that they're going to move and turn the page commensurately,
05:24including by a normalization agreement with Israel, including by deporting Palestinian terrorists,
05:31by telling foreign terrorists, foreign fighters, that they have to leave Syria,
05:36by assisting in the U.S.-led international campaign against ISIS to make sure ISIS doesn't make a resurgence,
05:44and then also to take responsibility for the ISIS detention centers in northeast Syria.
05:49So I think these are parallel tracks, and both sides have a golden opportunity to move that country into a much brighter future.
05:57Well, thank you, Mr. Rayburn.
05:58And by the way, that administration is well aware of our expectations.
06:04The list that you just described, I discussed this with both the president and Secretary of State, Marco Rubio,
06:10and laid out the expectations Senator Shaheen and I laid out in Munich to the foreign minister.
06:18We got no pushback from him at all.
06:21I might add one more important item on there that is important to us,
06:27and I think both president and Secretary of State Rubio feel the same way,
06:32and that is we have an expectation that the tolerance for the various religions,
06:38and it is a complex society, both ethnically and religious-wise,
06:44the tolerance is critically important to the success of that country.
06:49The Syrians tell us that they are well-experienced in this since they've been doing it for hundreds of years,
06:54and we're going to have to wait and see if they continue with that,
06:58because that is going to be critical to their success.
07:00So with that, Senator Shaheen.