Rep. Gerry Connolly Shows How to Counter Calls for War with Iran

After twenty years of failed wars in the Middle East, it's hard to believe that hawks still call for attacking Iran. One House Member shows how to expose their hypocrisy.

Last week, my wife an I hosted a fund-raiser at our home for Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat now serving his eighth term in the House of Representatives. It was one of the “Hometown Hero” events organized by J Street to support pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy Congressional champions. In our region, that includes Gerry Connolly, Abigail Spanberger, Don Beyer, Jennifer Wexton and Jamie Raskin.

Connolly was fabulous. I have known him for years, going back to our friendship in the late 1980s when he worked for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and I was with the House Armed Services Committee. Last week, with a government shutdown imminent, he eloquently demonstrated his strong support for a Congress that works for the American people and not one man, for upholding human rights and democracy in the Middle East, for stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, and for preserving democracy here at home.

Had I known about what he had just done at a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee meeting on Iran that week, I would have highlighted it for the assembled crowd. But I missed it. Fortunately, my colleague Sina Toosi at the reinvigorated Center for International Policy posted an article praising Connolly’s masterful questioning of a panel stacked with Iran war hawks.

Toosi says:

Connolly skillfully used a series of questions to highlight how the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), had successfully curbed Iran’s nuclear program and ensured its compliance, before it was recklessly abandoned by the Trump administration in 2018. He also challenged the notion that a military solution was viable or desirable for the U.S., especially when Israel, one of the most vocal opponents of the JCPOA, had refrained from using it when it had better options.

You really have to watch it to appreciate Connolly’s brilliant and engaging line of questioning directed at the one moderate on the panel, Brookings Institution Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Suzanne Maloney. His questioning begins at 1:42:00.

But here is an abbreviated transcript I made. With smarts, humor and grace, Connolly wrenches back the frame of the hearing - which, before his intervention, had all of the Republican members and the majority of the witnesses focused on Iran’s activities and the need for military strikes — what they called “kinetic options” — to “restore deterrence” and prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon.

Connolly begins: “The horrors of Iran becoming a nuclear power have been enumerated at this hearing. Was there ever an attempt to roll them back and to prevent this from happening?”

He knows full well that there was, but he allows Maloney to confirm this. She says, “The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was an attempt to contain and to begin to roll back Iran’s nuclear advances. Had it been implemented in full, had there been an opportunity - as everyone involved envisioned - to negotiate a follow-on agreement, I believe that we would be in a much stronger position with regards to Iran’s nuclear weapons capability.”

Connolly: “Was that agreement ever certified, in terms of compliance?”

Maloney: “Iran was complying with the JCPOA.”

Connolly: “And that was certified by the IAEA?”

Maloney: “That is correct.”

Connolly: “Multiple times?”

Maloney: “Yes.”

Connolly: “And in case anyone doesn’t want to trust an international organization, am I correct that it was certified twice by President Trump’s State Department?”

Maloney: “Yes, you are correct.”

Connolly: “Oh. And that was in all respects, was it not? With respect to centrifuges, with respect to the amount of enriched uranium that had to be shipped out of the country, with respect to lowering the rate of enrichment allowed, and with respect to the plutonium production reactor? Is that correct?”

Maloney: “Yes.”

Connolly: “So, we actually had a vehicle, and it was working, and they were in compliance. What happened to that vehicle?”

Maloney: “The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action has collapsed since the withdrawal by the Trump Administration in 2018 and the reimposition of sanctions in contravention to our obligations under the JCPOA.”

Having established the facts, having shifted the frame away from the threat inflation of the war hawks, Connolly goes in for the kill.

Connolly: “So, some of these people who are so quick to talk for a kinetic solution, conveniently overlook the fact that we had a non-kinetic solution that was working and was pushing Iran back from that nuclear threshold…And now we are faced with very few good options. Is that a fair statement?”

Mallony: “We have far worse options today than we had in 2015 or in 2018 when President Trump exited the deal.”

Connolly: “One of the biggest critics of the JCPOA, before it went into effect, was the prime minister of Israel, Mr. Netanyahu, who actually came here to Washington and spoke to a joint session of Congress, snubbing the chief executive of our country, President Obama, and agreeing unilaterally to an appearance here by one party’s invitation.

He claimed that this was so important, so existentially threatening, that it transcended politics…But, in the early part of his tenure, if he was worried about the existential threat Iran posed, do you believe that he could have had a ‘kinetic option? An option that Israel has, in fact, exercised in other nuclear situations, in Syria and Iraq, to wit?’”

Mallony: He exercised considerable covert options [eg., assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists] but not any sort of military strike.”

Connolly: “He didn't go to war with Iran. He didn’t bomb Iran. Though we hear some voices here today apparently thinking it’s okay for the United States to do that in a much more complicated, difficult and certain to be costly situation if we resort to violence. Would that be a fair statement?”

Mallony: “That would be a fair statement.”

Connolly concludes: “We have to take responsibility for the past. A lot of people who opposed JCPOA were proved wrong. Iran didn’t cheat. They, in fact, complied. It was certified by IAEA and by the Trump Administration itself. And we walked away from it. We did that. Not Russia. Not Iran. We did that. And we need to take some responsibility for that in trying to repair the damage we caused.”