 and where thoughtfulness and common sense are always at a premium. Senator Murphy has already built up a remarkable record of public service with several terms in the Connecticut General Assembly and the U.S. House of Representatives. And now in the U.S. Senate, to which he was elected in 2012. And I have to add that it's always been during my own government service a real pleasure to work with Senator Murphy. However complicated or difficult the issue. And I certainly can't think of a more complicated or difficult issue than the one that Senator Murphy's gonna address today, the Iranian nuclear issue, the agreement, comprehensive agreement that was reached on July the 14th and all of the implications and consequences that flow from that. I've long believed that a solid verifiable agreement is the best of the available alternatives to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. But there are a lot of fair concerns that have been raised not only about the terms of the agreement but about its implications, its consequences for a region that is already chaotic enough. And there's also a set of huge challenges ahead of us as well in terms of the execution of the agreement, which will be a formidable task and equally formidable task of embedding a nuclear agreement in a wider strategy in the region which recognizes the need to reassure our friends and push back against threatening Iranian behavior that's likely, if we're clear-eyed about this, to continue for some time to come on some important issues across the Middle East. But amidst all of the debate and the controversy and the criticism, it seems to me it's also important to keep in mind a couple of very basic questions. First, if we were to walk away from this agreement, is it possible to negotiate a better one? And if the answer to that question is no, are we better off with this agreement or without it? And as I said before, I can't think of anyone better to help us navigate those questions than all of the many other questions that arise in dealing with the Iranian nuclear problem than Senator Murphy. So Senator, thanks so much again for joining us. And ladies and gentlemen, I hope you'll join me in welcoming Senator Chris Murphy. Well, thank you very much to the Carnegie Endowment. Thank you to my good friend Bill Burns for welcoming me here today. My learning curve is a relatively new member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is continually steep. And the number of times that I've been able to sit down with Bill have been amongst the most important. He's been good enough as well to come meet with a group of us that have been sitting down occasionally over the course of the last four to six months to discuss a broader project, which I've spoken about in other forums, our effort to build a proactive, progressive foreign policy that can unite Democrats and progressives around the country. And he has been great to just give us some thoughts as we go through that process of development as well. Thank you to Karim for being part of this discussion that we'll have in a few moments, and all of you for joining us here today. This is about as important a set of weeks as you get as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and to have the opportunity to share some of my thoughts as we begin the formal steps in this process. We have a classified briefing later today for all of the Senate, and then our hearing tomorrow in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I think is important. I've been in Washington now for about eight and a half years, not as long as a lot of people in this room, but long enough to have learned some things. And the nice thing about this job is that I get some perspective as well. I get to go back to Connecticut every single weekend. I think it gives me a little bit of perspective on how things work here as well. And I generally scoff at these broad generalizations about how Washington is or what defines Washington. But over my almost nine years in Congress, I have come to at least one inescapable conclusion about Washington, and I want to spend a little bit of time unpacking it this morning. It's this. This town still runs on war. Now, I know that's not shocking to hear from members of the foreign policy establishment, but it's not actually immediately obvious when you get here as a new congressman or senator. You can't feel the tilt of the town, this leaning of the whole place towards military confrontation, because it's, frankly, pretty slight. But it's powerful, and it forces debate to slide toward viewing every international predicament and every potential solution through a military lens. And it's, frankly, easy to understand why this tilt exists. It starts with our appropriate, deserved reverence for the country's so-called greatest generation. No matter how many Vietnam's or Iraq's or Somalis or Afghanistan's that we live through, our international historical identity is still wrapped with the texture of our World War II experience, America marching to the rescue, armies lined up against each other, the unambiguous evil of Hitler's Nazis, peace treaties providing clear endings to nasty but necessary conflicts. No matter how fundamentally the world has changed and changed again and changed again, since then, a big part of this town still views American power through a World War II lens, the idea that American military power can solve virtually any problem around the world. And, frankly, one just has to look around at the names on the giant Virginia office buildings, ringing the city to understand who else has a vested interest in conflict. Eisenhower's critique of the military industrial complex is more true today than when he gave his famous speech 60 years ago. There's a lot of momentum behind finding military answers to global problems when there's billions and billions of dollars at stake and thousands and thousands of American jobs at stake as well. So all of this is to say that when an American president proposes to solve a major international crisis through a non-military set of means, he is running uphill in this town. And as you know, President Obama isn't the first chief executive to face this problem. When President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev stood before reporters to announce the INF Treaty, Reagan whispered to Gorbachev, I bet the hardliners in both our countries are bleeding when we shake hands. And true to form, back home, a young congressman from Georgia, Newt Gingrich, compared Reagan's outreach to the Russian leader in Geneva to Chamberlain's 1938 visit to Munich. Conservative commentators said Reagan had, quote, shamed himself in the country. William Buckley said Reagan had signed a suicide pack. Nixon faced the same ridicule when he opened relations with China. He was accused of abandoning all moral principle in dealing with the Chinese, despite their human rights shames. Commentators said Nixon's move was, quote, immoral, indecent, insane, and fraught with danger for the survival of the United States. Nixon had, quote, abandoned all moral principles. It's like God and the devil having a high level meeting. Now, despite the fact that China in the 1970s and the Soviet Union in the 1980s were the definition of bad actors from an American perspective, history has proved these critics of diplomacy wrong. Now, of course, that hasn't stopped Republicans today from engaging in the same overheated rhetoric about the Iran nuclear agreement. Much of it coming from members of Congress who couldn't conceivably have read the entire agreement before commenting on the day of its announcement. My good friend, Senator Mark Kirk, for instance, has veered from saying that the president actually wants Iran to get nuclear weapons to going back to the hardliners' old friend, Neville Chamberlain, saying that Chamberlain got a better deal from Hitler than President Obama got from Iran. And so many in Washington today are no less afraid of diplomacy than they were 30 or 40 years ago. And if you want further proof of this concept, just look to the incredible double standard of oversight coming from Congress regarding the two most important initiatives of this administration in the Middle East. And we're at war with ISIS today. From my perspective, there's no doubt about that. The United States has sent thousands of troops and billions of dollars back into the region to fight this uncommonly dangerous enemy. And the Constitution is clear. The president cannot initiate war against a foreign power without the consent of Congress. But on this matter, Congress has been completely silent, saved for a last-minute authorization passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the waning days of the Democratic Senate last December. But on Iran, Congress is tripping over itself to inspect and oversee and inquisition every aspect of this deal and these negotiations. Republicans in Congress are so excited to vote on the Iran deal that they insisted on doing it twice. Once in the spring on a bill that simply restated Congress's existing powers to approve or disapprove of an agreement and expectedly again late this summer. So when the president engages in war, Congress simply waves the executive on by. When the president engages in diplomacy, Congress trips over itself to set up hurdles and obstacles. Now, let me be clear. This isn't an argument for Congress to step aside and wave this agreement on by two. We should be doing rigorous oversight on both. But I wanna spend my remaining time up here at the podium just talking about a few of the standards by which our review of the Iran deal should take place. First, every member of Congress has to understand that the vote on this agreement does not take place in a vacuum. It will have far reaching consequences beyond an up or down vote on the deal itself. And this vote is a choice between the likely global consequences of an agreement that goes into an effect and the likely global consequences of an agreement that does not go into effect due only by the rejection of it by the United States Congress. And here's the cold hard reality of how that scenario plays out. If the US Congress rejects this deal and by the way, we are the only parliamentary body within the P5 plus one that is voting on this agreement, then two things happen. One, the sanctions fall apart. And two, the restrictions on Iran's nuclear program don't go into effect. Period, stop. Anyone positing an alternative is frankly living in some sort of alternate universe. So for those of you who, so for those of my colleagues who wanna vote no in Congress, then your rendering of what will happen if the deal goes into effect has to be pretty apocalyptic in order for it to be worse than an economically empowered Iran speeding forward with an unchecked nuclear program. This isn't a referendum. This is a choice for members of Congress. Now, second, when evaluating the regional consequences of the deal, and this is important and where a lot of the debate is today, let's not rewrite history and let's not paper over the complexity of our relationships in the region with black and white, good guy, bad guy analysis of the Middle East. Opponents of the deal are now saying that Congress should reject the deal simply because it would result in sanctions relief giving Iran more money to spend on deleterious activity in the region. But these sanctions were put in place only as a pressure lever to get Iran to give up their nuclear weapons program. None of our allies, let alone the Russians and the Chinese would have agreed to them if the secret motive was never to release them simply because Iran supports terrorist organizations in addition to harboring nuclear weapons ambitions. It is a total rewrite of history to suggest that the nuclear sanctions were about anything other than stopping Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. But let's not delude ourselves into thinking that our historical balance of friendships in the Middle East has accrued to the benefit of American national security. And I think this is something that we have to be honest about as well as we proceed with this debate. If I support this agreement, it won't be because I think that the deal is going to usher in an era of robust international cooperation between America and Iran. It will be because in my analysis, the deal puts a nuclear weapon further out of reach of the Iranian regime than without the deal. But I also don't know why so many of my colleagues are so worried about a new regional order in which America is ever so slightly hedged on its historic reliance on Gulf state Sunni allies. Iran is a bad actor doing terrible things in the region. But Saudi Arabia is not and never has been a white knight. There is no justification for the United States historic intolerance of Iran's support for terrorists in the region while we turn a blind eye to the Gulf support for Wahhabism and radical Islamic groups. And if you believe that ISIS is our number one problem in the Middle East today and many neo-conservatives who oppose this deal claim to believe this, then how can you argue that some sort of reconciliation with Iran who joins the United States in viewing ISIS as an existential threat would do anything but help in our fight to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIS. Now sure, it's uncomfortable to talk about working with Iran to defeat ISIS but this is a sloppy, messy, convoluted real world. And in the real world, you have to pay attention to the enemies of your enemy. Let me be clear about what I'm saying here. Like opponents of the deal, I'm worried that Iran is gonna use money that it gets from sanctions relief to seed instability and conflict in the Middle East. But this was always a risk of our nuclear weapons strategy. To hold otherwise is false revisionism. And I am not welcoming of a newly empowered Iran. I just think it's time that we admit that our named friends in the region haven't always had our best interests in mind. And our named enemies might have cause that occasionally aligns with ours. Lastly, I wanna address the issue of inspections. My own personal hesitancy to formally endorse this agreement is just due to my need to make sure that the inspections are actually of the exact nature that the administration claims. This is the most important component of the deal and I need to know it backward and forward before I formally signal my support. But our standard of review for the inspections regime is not and cannot be anytime anywhere. Every day a reporter asks me whether the inspections regime comports with the anytime anywhere standard. But not once has President Obama or Secretary Kerry uttered this phrase. It's been pointed out to me that there have been at least one member of the administration that has said this, but no country, certainly not Iran, would ever allow inspectors from competitor nations unfettered, unconditional access to every corner of their territory. It's absurd to think that there weren't going to be some set of rules for how the IAEA gets onto an Iranian military site. Why do we know this? Because under existing protocol, there's really no ability for the IAEA to get timely access to military installations in NPT countries subject to inspection. This agreement for the first time ever actually sets up a timeframe by which inspectors need to be allowed onto military sites. So from my view, anytime anywhere is frankly just a red herring for those that had no intention of ever supporting the agreement in the first place. Now maybe some will find that the inspection regime isn't rigorous enough and that would be a legitimate reason for opposing this deal but it shouldn't fail this test because it doesn't meet that mythical standard. So those would be some of my hopes for the parameters under which we review this agreement. And I frankly also hope that we appreciate how far we've traveled in such a relatively short period of time and great credit to Secretary Burns for his work in getting us here. You know, many scoffed at the news that President Obama was gonna sit down and try to negotiate a solution to the dilemma of Iran's nuclear weapons program. Few people believed he could do it and even the president estimated that his chances were significantly less than 50-50 of getting it done. And so in many ways, this agreement really is remarkable. Centrifuges cut by two thirds. Stockpiles decreased by 98%. Enrichment goes from 20% to 3%. A plutonium path is blocked. Unprecedented inspections go into place. The president secretary carry in their team they need to be congratulated on this historic achievement. And I truly believe that this Senate, that the debate in the Senate to come is gonna be one of the most impactful, most historic in recent memory. Because not only is this about endorsing a historic landmark diplomatic agreement. Coming back to where I began, this is also in the end really about an endorsement or rejection of American-led diplomacy. In 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin remarked upon recognizing the PLO that quote, you don't make peace with your friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies. Diplomacy is hard and the worthwhile kind only happens sitting across from people with which you have fundamental disagreements. But on the other side of failed diplomacy is too often war and destruction. The president is not wrong to set up this bright line bloody choice. If you believe that Iran wants a nuclear weapon you divorce them from this intention either by negotiating with them which by definition means giving them something to get something or by attacking them. If you aren't satisfied with the strategy of just wait and hope then those are your options. Negotiate or fight. Now we're really good at fighting. We've done a lot of it over this past century. And this town is very good at coming up with ways to justify the fight. The streets and the avenues of Washington are slanted in just the right way to prejudice almost every debate towards the battlefield. But no matter how many times politicians and pundits say the words Neville Chamberlain the scope of human history tells us that diplomacy is not weakness. It is the epitome of strength. If this deal stops Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon then Congress should support it. But we shouldn't run from the possibility that our approval of it will also be a more general victory for non-kinetic American power and making the playing field for the next diplomatic agreement just a little less tilted. Thank you very much to the Carnegie Foundation for having me today and I look forward to the discussion. Let me thank again Senator Murphy for joining us this morning and for such an articulate address. I'm Karim Sajidpur of the Carnegie Endowment first like to also thank all of you for coming. There's looking around the audience there's so much brain power so I'd like to keep my remarks fairly limited then open it up to all of you to think about questions that you have. But first question Senator Murphy as you mentioned it's a remarkable document. The deal is a remarkable document. It's remarkably complex and detailed and when you were first reviewing it when you poured yourself through it what did you find to be kind of the aspects of the deal you found the strongest? And then second which aspects of the document do you find concern you more? Well first when I received word that a final agreement had been reached we had a platform to compare it to. Many of us were very supportive in general of the framework and were hopeful that the final agreement was going to mirror it. And so that was the first thing I did and I was relieved to find that the agreement basically tracked the initial framework that we had been talking about and debating for a number of months. I've agreed with the President from the outset on the basic standards by which this agreement should be measured moving breakout time to a year and having the agreement be in effect for at least 10 years was something that was important to me. And so the aspects of the agreement that meet that one year breakout 10 year duration were critical. I had been worried as I watched the negotiations play out that we were going to get hung up on this question of access to military sites. And so I was pleased that we were able to figure out a solution to it but as I mentioned in my prepared remarks that remains the reason why I haven't formally said that I'm going to vote for this in the end. This question of what can happen during those 24 days I think is a very important one, a very complicated one that is going to require all of us to get deeply enmeshed in the questions of technology and nuclear science. And so that to me is still an outstanding question. I think I understood that the arms embargo had to be on the table. There are many who were very disappointed that that became part of the ultimate deal. I think in retrospect it's unfortunate that we were so focused only on the economic sanctions blind to the fact that there were non-economic sanctions related to Iran's nuclear program that had to be part of this negotiation if we were going to be serious about using the set of nuclear sanctions as a lever to get them to the table. And so my outstanding questions still remain those surrounding the inspections. And I think this question as I mentioned of how events play out in the region are important but ultimately not dispositive for me. I am going to review this as a agreement about the future of Iran's nuclear program. And I'm going to commit to a separate process by which we address all of the other nefarious activity of Iran in the region. And so my review of the deal will be fairly narrow. Most of my open questions continue to relate to inspections. Great, so let me set up a hypothetical which is that the deal passes Congress and two years from now European companies recommends trading with Iran. And then a bus full of Israeli tourists is blown up somewhere in Europe and it's pinned back to Hezbollah or Iran. Or there's another popular uprising in Iran which is crushed by the Iranian regime. And Congress decides to introduce new sanctions against Iran. They're non-nuclear related but Iran replies by saying you've abrogated your end of the deal because you've reintroduced new sanctions so we're going to recommence our nuclear activities. I mean, is that something that I've spoken to people at the White House. They say this is something that certainly does concern them down the road but do you see this as some critics of the deal are concerned that Congress would be forced to exercise restraint for fear of abrogating the deal. Is that, how do you see that scenario playing out? Well, my intention is to observe the letter of the agreement and the administration has been very clear that there is absolutely nothing in this agreement that A, removes the existing sanctions that are applied to Iran by the United States with respect to human rights abuses or support for terrorism. Or removes from Congress the ability to apply new sanctions. And there is nothing that would allow Iran to walk away from this agreement should there be sanctions applied in the future to non-nuclear activity. And so I'm not gonna live in fear of Iran violating this agreement simply because their behavior crosses a tripwire that causes us to have to engage in a new conversation about sanctions. And I wouldn't support this deal if I thought that it was committing to a policy of essentially standing down on Iran's behavior in the region. And frankly, I think it's important for us to make that clear. If Iran thinks that this is a get out of jail free card for their support for terrorism in the region or ratcheting up human rights abuses internally, then it's not a deal worth signing as far as I'm concerned from our perspective. I don't deny that that's going to be a complicated question, but at the outset I'm certainly not gonna concede that this would render Congress's ability to increase sanctions for other reasons impotent. And in your remarks, I think you very articulately raised this question about a challenge that the United States has in the Middle East, which is this conflict oftentimes between our interest and our values, some of our allies in the region are not sharing those values. And I was just wondering if you find this to be, you've been in Congress almost 10 years now, is this a moment in which many members are now raising these questions about who are our real allies in the region? What are our interests? Because for about four decades, it was pretty consistent. There was a template that we had cooperation with Saudi Arabia and containment slash conflict with Iran. Are you one data point or are there many data points? I think there's a more robust conversation happening about our balance of friendships in the region and it's made necessary by a region that is more unstable today, a region in which our named enemies now have more power and more impact in the region. And of course, much of this is a result of American activity, much of this new balance of power in the region, which requires us to think about a new balance of friendship and alliance is because of an Iraq war that has set off a series of local catastrophes. But I actually don't concede that this is just a question of balancing values versus interests. I appreciate the long historic alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia. But this hasn't just been a question of American values being out of step with what's happening in Saudi Arabia. I would argue that our interests also have not been properly aligned. I mean, the money that flows into Saudi Arabia and back out to Wahhabi clerics to extremist madrasas all throughout the region are not in alignment with American interests. And so yes, there is this distortion of what we say about our values and what we do when we are so closely aligned with the country with that kind of human rights record. But there is also a question as to whether it has been in our historic interest to align ourselves so closely with a set of countries that very quietly fuel money, much of it American money, that comes there through oil purchase to extremist Islamic groups that end up organizing against the United States and many of our other allies. So I think this is not just a question of realigning our values. It also is a question of whether there's a conversation that's necessary about realigning our interests. Let me go back to Iran for a second because there's a debate in Washington about why Iran decided to sign this deal, why Iran finally compromised. And it's between those who argue that it was simply because of economic distress, the combination of sanctions, the drop in oil prices and the money, the billions they're spending, sustaining the Assad regime. And there are those who argue that moderates or pragmatists in Tehran have decided to pursue a fundamental shift, a fundamental break with the last three, four decades of Iranian history. What is your reading of why Iran decided to compromise? So I'm hopeful that this is the presage for a longer-term transition of power within the country to younger, more moderate forces. But I don't presuppose that the reason for them entering into this agreement is because the shift is happening under our feet as we speak. I think this is a recognition on behalf of the supreme leader that this election, the election of Rouhani, signaled a degree of unrest that he had to answer. And so his way of answering it is to allow for this negotiation to take place releasing economic pressure on the country. And I think you just have to listen. I don't ever put too much stock into the statements of the supreme leader. I think we've seen in the context of this negotiation that what he says does not always match with the policies as we saw in these talks. But you saw what he just said in the last few days that there is nothing about this agreement that is going to change the fact that the United States is still in their eyes the great Satan, that we will be in opposition to their interests in the region for the foreseeable future. And the hardliners don't go away. In fact, they are going to try harder than ever to try to make themselves relevant. And I don't likely believe that there's any fundamental shift that happens in the short term. And my final question before handing it over to all of you, the U.S. and Cuba normalized relations just in the last week. And I'm curious to get your sense of what would need to happen before the United States and Iran normalized relations. I mean, there was an intersection, a U.S. intersection in Havana for about three decades before this normalization, before it turned into an embassy. We don't even have an intersection yet in Tehran, but for yourself and other members of Congress, what would you need to see change in Iranian behavior to start to advocate for normalization of relations? Well, I think first and foremost you would need to see a complete change in their disposition towards terrorist groups in the region. And again, as I said in my answer to the previous question, I don't see that happening anytime soon. I don't think that there is a conversation that is going to happen in Washington about the normalization of relations with Iran anytime soon. A lot has to change. Our bar for normalization of relations is not normally domestic human rights, but I think you would also want to see some progress on that as well. I don't think that's a conversation that happens anytime soon. But of course, this question of formal diplomatic relations is maybe an overplayed distinction. We are going to talk to the Iranians in the wake of this agreement. We may not have an embassy in Tehran. We may often do it in multilateral forums or through partners. But there is a channel now that exists. And part of what I was trying to say in these remarks is that it's a channel that's important, especially in a destabilized region where there may be limited opportunities for us to cooperate with Iran and taking on common enemies. Great, thank you so much. So I'll hand it over to all of you. Maybe there's going to be so many questions. I'll take two at once, and we can bunch them together if you can just identify yourself and be as brief as possible right there. Please. Daniel Sirward from Johns Hopkins SICE. Senator, you know me as a Balkans expert, but I spent seven years abroad doing non-proliferation work as an American diplomat. One thing I would never want to do is try to prevent proliferation in a country where I had no diplomatic presence. So the question becomes not formal diplomatic relations, but the kind of informal or less than full diplomatic relations that we did have with Cuba for a long time that served our purposes very well. Don't we need that in Tehran? And I spotted here Greg Craig, who was President Obama's first White House counsel and former head of policy planning at State Department. Most importantly, former member of the Carnegie board, so I wanted to pick on him for a second. Morning, Greg. Morning, Senator. First of all, let me thank you for your remarks. I thought they were terrific. And I'm particularly grateful for your dealing with the windfall argument that has been made against the agreement. I have two concerns that I wonder if you might comfort me about. My first concern is that this debate that we're about to have is not on the level. You pointed out correctly, I think, that there were many, many critics of the agreement that had their talking points all ready to go in press releases and pushed the send button without ever looking at the text or the content of the agreement. We have the example of the 47 senators already writing a letter to the Supreme Leader raising concerns about the agreement. And there are those of us who think that the likelihood of one Republican vote either in the House or the Senate for this particular agreement is very, very slim. Do you think that this debate that's gonna occur is in fact gonna be a legitimate and thoughtful debate comparable to the remarks you gave us? Or is it gonna be driven by party line politics and just the drive to beat Obama? That's my first question. My second concern has to do with the leadership of those who ultimately will be supporting this agreement. There are hundreds of diplomats that have signed letters, nuclear experts that have signed letters in support. And some of us are concerned that the leadership, the senior leadership of the Democratic Party either in the Senate and the House have been absent in supporting and reacting to the presentation of the administration. We've had one senior Democrat saying the jury's still out. We have one aspirant for the leadership of the Democratic Party in the Senate who is publicly uncertain about how he is going to vote on this but still wants to be the leader of the Democratic Caucus. So there's concerns not only about the critics having a legitimate debate but about the ultimate supporters being strong enough to defend this agreement in the Senate. I think those are all great points. So I was admittedly not a supporter of the Corker congressional approval legislation. I ended up voting for it because it got significantly watered down to the point that it became largely benign. But I was a fairly vocal opponent of it through 95% of the process until it got changed at the last minute for the exact reason that you stated in your first question. I just didn't believe that this was ultimately going to be a fair on the level of this passionate nonpartisan debate. I thought that by handing over to Congress the power to approve something that we do not have a constitutional obligation to approve, a Congress that was controlled by opponents of the president, you were essentially politicizing a debate that didn't need to be politicized. And I think Republicans have largely proved that to be true in their vitriol that came spewing forth within hours of the agreement being signed, I don't think, I'm not so fatalistic as to the question of whether there will be any Republicans who will support it. I have had quiet conversations with a handful of Republican senators who were very worried about the entirety of the party getting on the wrong side of this agreement. And I think the polls will shift over time, maybe backwards and forwards on this, but consistently they have shown that the American public, granted with very little knowledge of the details of the agreement, has supported it most recently in a Washington Post poll by 20 points. As to your second question, here's the trap that we're in. So we are appropriately critical of Republicans who have come out and lambasted the deal without considering it. That means though, that we have to take the time to consider it before we come out as fulsome vocal supporters of it. And so for the time being, there is this imbalance in rhetoric. Republicans just incessantly attacking the deal and Democrats supporting it as I generally did today without completely endorsing it because we feel like we at the very least have to go to tonight's classified briefing and sit through at least one official hearing before we come out in support. And so I think there will be a time. That's a long way of saying that I think we are in a period of misalignment of rhetoric that will be corrected. But Democrats can't criticize Republicans for being too quick to criticize it if we are also too quick to support it. As to the question of our presence in the country, I wholeheartedly agree. There's no way that we can appropriately oversee the administration and enforcement of this agreement if we don't have eyes and ears inside the country. It may not be through an official embassy, but we are going to have to have an active presence with our partners through the IAEA. As you know, Secretary Kerry just yesterday appointed a representative to oversee the implementation of this agreement. I would hope that that's not going to be one individual, but that's going to be an office staffed with people whose job is going to be to have limited relations with Iran to make sure that the United States is on the ground in some way, shape, or form to make sure that Iran is comporting with the agreement. And I guess that's why I made the point that we shouldn't get too hung up over this question of official diplomatic relations because by nature of signing this agreement we're admitting that we are in a relationship now, a complicated one and often adversarial one but a relationship nonetheless. There's been a debate within the State Department for many years about opening an U.S. intersection in Tehran. Is that something that you would support? I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I think I'd have to understand better the implications. Any questions? Okay, and we're going to privilege females in the back if there are any, but if not, this gentle please. Thank you. Alison Cunningham at McClarty Associates. Good to see you, Senator. As you touched in your remarks, the sanctions relief is very, is unbalanced in the sense that U.N. sanctions will fall, the European sanctions will fall, but American sanctions by and large will not fall because they are congressionally mandated. The President can adjust some of them but for most American businesses, Iran will continue to be off limits. So as we engage with Iran, it's going to be the Europeans engaging with Iran, it will be the Chinese, it will be the Russians, but the American private sector will by and large be forbidden from engaging in Iran on economic terms. Do you agree with that? And if you wish to change it, how would you go about it? So I expressed last week discomfort in the fact that the administration was moving to the U.N. so quickly without waiting for the congressional approval process to move forward. I understand that that was important to our allies, but it does create a uncomfortable dynamic for many of us given the fact that the U.S. sanctions are intertwined inside and amidst the U.N. sanctions. And so it would have been preferable for all of these sanctions to come undone at the same time. That's not how this is playing out. I'm not gonna shed many tears for American corporations who may have to wait a number of months before they get their hands on deals within Iran. That is a small price to pay for our insistence that the deal go into effect in principal ways before U.S. sanctions are undone. And so yes, there will be a period of time in which there will be a disadvantage for American companies, European companies, Russian companies, Chinese companies may get in line before ours, but that's not why we did this deal. We didn't do this deal in order to give American companies an advantage inside Iran. And it was absolutely critical for those of us that want to support this agreement that our sanctions not be suspended until we have seen all of these steps ultimately be taken, the dismantlement of the centrifuges, the process beginning of stockpiles moving outside of the country. So I think that this is an uncomfortable arrangement, but in order to engender the support of the United States Congress an absolutely necessary one. More questions. My understanding of the U.S. sanctions is that it's not just going to be six months or so before American corporations can do business again in Iran, but it could conceivably many, many years before. I mean, is that your assessment as well? So I think it's hard to know how long it takes before all of them are suspended. And of course, you have to remember that we're first talking about suspension. Ultimately, I mean, there's only so long that the president can suspend these sanctions without Congress having to step in and remove them permanently. If I were the Iranians or the P5 plus one, the non-American members of the P5 plus one, I would insist at some point that the United States Congress actually remove these sanctions. And frankly, I think that the Congress should be interested in ultimately voting to remove these sanctions because if we set up a precedent in which the president can suspend congressional sanctions indefinitely then it really takes the teeth out of any future sanctions that the Congress passes. So we should insist ultimately that we weigh in. But yeah, I think it's unclear now exactly how long this is. And I don't think there should be an expectation that all of a sudden six months from now all of these sanctions come undone. Great. More questions. And the way back. Hi, how you doing? I'm Eduardo, I'm from Venezuela and I don't want to stray too far from what we're talking about, but I'm wondering what the relationship between Iran and Venezuela have in influencing Hezbollah, people affiliated with Hezbollah being harbored in Latin America, specifically Venezuela, and how that is affecting relations between U.S. and Iran. Well, this will remain a great and primary concern for the United States and for the United States Congress. And again, I think it is a false construct that many of my colleagues have created to suggest that we need to solve the problem of Iran's support for Hezbollah or their allies' support for Hezbollah before entering into an agreement relative to Iran's nuclear program. And I completely buy the argument that it is more likely, not less likely, that we are ultimately able to address Iran's support for terrorism if we set the question of Iran's nuclear program aside. The only, the primary development that would make Iran's support for Hezbollah even more menacing would be the protection of a nuclear umbrella. And so taking that off the table allows us to speak to this concern, I think, in a more legitimate way. Now, I think in the short term, there's no doubt that the release of these sanctions will provide Iran with increased resources with which to support Hezbollah. And one of the questions that keeps me up at night is what the short term consequences are in Syria after this agreement is signed. I can certainly play out for you a scenario with which the signature on this agreement ultimately paves a path for a political settlement inside Syria, but I can also conceive of a short term scenario in which some of the money which is released to Iran in the coming months is used to support Hezbollah within Syria that right now, by many reports, is having trouble putting together the resources with which to continue to protect Assad and his forces in and around Damascus. And so I'm trying to be as clear out as possible about this. If I ultimately come out as a very vocal supporter of this agreement, I'm also not going to deny that there are short term consequences, one of which may be increased support for Hezbollah that will present problems for the United States and for our allies. Thank you. Please. Hi, my name is Ruby Russell and I'm a master's student at the Middlebury Institute. I was wondering if you could talk about your views on the best ways to move forward with our Gulf allies and the aftermath of the deal. So I get the sense that in Saudi Arabia, for example, concerns aren't rooted in the objective nature of the deal or the nuclear program itself, but rather the symbolism of the US extending a negotiating hand to Saudi Arabia's mortal ally, I mean mortal enemy. So I'm just wondering how we can reassure our Gulf allies that the deal doesn't equate an abandonment of the Gulf. As you know, this has been a big part of the President's outreach in the region. It was the central focus of the Camp David meeting. We have a lot of work to do. And I think there are some very important questions for Congress that will underlay that work. There are going to be requests, as there already have been, from our Gulf state friends for treaties, for formal alliances with the United States to protect against attacks from Iran. That is something that cannot happen without congressional consent. Many of us were worried about commitments that the President would make at Camp David that would abrogate the right of Congress to consent to that kind of treaty arrangement. And I think it's an appropriate discussion to have, but Congress has to be part of it. I think there's going to be a real debate as to whether the solution here is to provide an even greater level of arms to our Sunni Gulf state friends in the region. If that discussion is going to take place, it has to happen in the context of how they're going to use them. I mean, it's not in our interest to fuel on either side a proxy war in places like Yemen between Saudi Arabia, Gulf states, and Iran. And so we want to give assurances to our Saudi friends, to our Gulf state friends, that we continue to have their back, but we also don't want to be blindly sending them weapons that they are going to use to destabilize other countries in the region. And today it's Yemen, but we shouldn't take for granted that there aren't potential other dominoes to fall in the region. Let's talk about Israel for a moment. Secretary Carter traveled there immediately in the wake of the agreement. I understand that there are likely not going to be military agreements that are going to be signed in the short term. I think Prime Minister Netanyahu is going to engage all of his energies. As I understand it, into stopping this agreement from going into effect, my hope is, is that if Congress does approve or fails to disapprove this agreement, and it goes into effect, that we are then immediately able to sit down with the Israelis and talk about a variety of ways in which we can continue to invest in their quantitative and qualitative military advantage in the region, how we can address the concerns that may remain. I think as happened with the interim agreement, time will be the best proof point for the effect of this agreement on Israel. I would never support this agreement if I didn't believe that it wasn't in the best interests of Israel. I think that if you go to Jerusalem as an American or to Tel Aviv as an American Senator or Congressman today, the Israelis will tell you that the interim agreement has worked out much better than they had initially hoped and suspected to the point that many Israeli politicians' hope was that it would just continue in operation if these negotiations fell apart. My belief and my hope at the time is that the same analysis will be done in retrospect of this agreement. So we're gonna have to make some new commitments, but ultimately, time may prove this agreement to work in the interests of the Israelis as well. So we have five minutes left, and maybe time for two last quick questions, please, in the front. My name is Marlen Davis. I'm with Motorola Solutions, and I wanted to follow up on Nelson's questions about the commercial benefits of opening that market for business interests, recognizing that you will not shed any tears for the corporations. I was wondering, though, if there is a possibility that you would support facilitating ways to open that market and provide soft diplomacy for US business and Iranian business as was followed by Secretary Clinton when she was there. Thank you. Is there any one in the way back? Way back, I see a question. Yeah, please. And this will be the final one, unfortunately. Hi, my name is Soha Ashraqi. I was born and raised in Iran, so in part I kind of saw this whole play out of growing up in a country where this intense disagreement and dichotomy between Iran and the US exists, and now as an American citizen, I'm very concerned with how this reopening of relations is gonna work out, and I think in large part, in order for Iran to be able to move forward with those relations with the US, that's gonna have to take the shape of Iranian citizens becoming more empowered, and more than half of the Iranian economy is formally owned by the state, and I would say another 30% takes a form of peristatals and semi-publics, so the kind of investment that's gonna go into Iran, considering it's not really from the US at this point, it's gonna go into the hands of the Basijis and the Revolutionary Guards and the likes, and is there any way to be able to somehow construct and maybe facilitate the investment that's gonna go back to Iran in order to kind of go into the hands of the actual people? I'm not sure how that's actually gonna take shape, but maybe being able to facilitate the kind of investments to not just go to the public sector, which would then directly go to the hands of Hezbollah, but if they were to go to the maybe 10% actual private sector that exists, then in the long run, the people would become empowered and you could see actual change that would then increase in the realm of human rights as well. Thank you, and I think your perspective is incredibly important here. To restate something I said in my prepared remarks, I'm gonna support this agreement because I think that it stops, if I support this agreement, I will because it's going to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, not because I think that it's going to facilitate a fundamental shift in internal politics within Iran. That being said, I think there is a very plausible argument to make that this victory for moderates will be empowering not only to those in government, but to all of those students who were part, are part of this movement, to all of the young people who generally have pro-Western sentiments, who now see that their vote at the ballot box actually resulted in real tangible change. There is an empowerment that simply happens by nature of this deal going into effect that is potentially very important. I don't think that we can rely on it as U.S. policymakers as a rationale for supporting the agreement, but it's important. And as you also know, the biggest beneficiaries of the sanctions regime were the hardliners, were the revolutionary guard, were all of those that were able to profit off of the black market that was created out of necessity by the sanctions. And so they stand to be the ones that lose the most as legitimate commerce now starts to occur between Europe, the United States, China, Russia, others, and Iran. Now in the United States, we have a set of laws on the books that prevent United States companies from engaging in illicit activities, bribery, payoffs in foreign countries. And so we certainly have some checks on the kind of deals that might be required of those hardliners in order to do business within the country. So there's some natural protections for the kind of commerce that I think you're hoping happen as a result of this agreement. And it's related to your question as well. I mean, listen, there's something to be said for the fact that no two countries with the McDonald's have ever gone to war with each other. You know, economic diplomacy is real. And the more you open up a nation to some of the values that come with access to Western capital, the more you are able to empower those populations who may be bent on reconciliation rather than on conflict. And so again, it's not a reason to support this agreement but it's certainly a realistic set of potential outcomes that the economic opening of Iran will provide empowerment to moderates will weaken hardliners in a way that in the long run can be beneficial to both the United States and to Iran. This is gonna be a momentous next few weeks in the Congress and to Greg's concern. I think there is no way to divorce this debate from a set of presidential politics that are gonna force Republican leaders to an extreme position. But there are a handful of Republicans in the Senate at the very least who want to have an honest debate about this. And as I said, I think this is about something much greater than just the details of this agreement. I think we're at a moment where we as a Congress need to endorse diplomacy as a legitimate tool of the American president in trying to settle disputes overseas and that is a potential incredibly beneficial consequence of this debate going the right way for the president. So again, thank you very much for having me and I really look forward to all of you being part of this debate to come in the House and the Senate over the next several weeks. Thank you so much for coming. As you know, the approval ratings of Congress are unfortunately pretty low, but I think those of you in the audience and those of you watching on TV who saw this, I think, in witnessing Senator Murphy's thoughtfulness, that approval rating goes up a few percentage points today, so thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, that was terrific. No, it was great, it was great. That's very kind of you.