“No one wants a fight with Iran. No one wants a fight with North Korea. The way to avoid a fight is to show that there is a limit to the patience of civilized countries of the world. Which is why the age of strategic patience is now in the past.”

Click here to watch Sen. Barrasso’s remarks.

WASHINGTON, D.C.— Today, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor about the threats posed by North Korea and Iran.

Excerpts of Senator Barrasso’s remarks:

“People around the country know that the world continues to be a very dangerous place.

“It became more dangerous over the past eight years.

“I believe that’s particularly related to what I saw as unwise and unsound policies by the Obama administration –certainly when it comes to foreign policy.

“Every president’s foreign policy should secure America’s national interests and demonstrate America’s leadership around the world.

“That was not the case under President Obama.

“The last president and his team followed a policy of ‘strategic patience’ when dealing with hostile countries all around the world –Iran, North Korea.

“Any time there was a belligerent, aggressive, cunning dictator on the move; President Obama’s position was strategic patience. It was a terrible approach for us and for dealing with reckless regimes.

“I always thought President Obama was completely focused on signing a nuclear deal with Iran, not because it was actually a great deal, but maybe because it might reflect well on his legacy.

“As part of this deal, the former president accepted Iranian demands to lift an arms embargo that the United Nations had put into place.

“This was an embargo that said that Iran wasn’t supposed to be selling weapons to other countries.

“The embargo will disappear in five years, whether Iran complies with it or not.

“We already know that Iran has no intention of playing by the rules. They haven’t played by the rules all the way through.

“Last week, Secretary of Defense James Mattis said that Iran has already been violating the embargo, and that’s why I believe they have no intention of playing by the rules.

“He said that we’ve seen Iranian supplied missiles being fired into Saudi Arabia by the rebels in Yemen.

“The secretary of State – Rex Tillerson – was even more clear.

“He said last week that Iran is ‘the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.’

“He said that Iran is ‘responsible for intensifying multiple conflicts and undermining U.S. interests in countries such as Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon.’

“This is a direct result of President Obama spending eight years being strategically patient.

“It’s a result of sending the signal that Iran would be rewarded for its bad behavior.

“Let’s look at what happened last year when the Obama administration was bragging about the nuclear deal.

“Just when the deal went into effect, President Obama arranged to send to Iran $1.7 billion in cash. $1.7 billion is an astonishingly large amount of money. It’s 1,700 piles of a million dollars.

“Remember the news reports about pallets of cash stacked up, going to Iran?

“President Obama sent $400 million as a down payment.

“Within 24 hours, the Iranians agreed to release a group of Americans who they’d been holding hostage.

“The Obama White House said it wasn’t a ransom payment to free the hostages.

“The Obama administration actually thought that the American people were naïve enough to believe that it was just a coincidence in timing.

“Well, you can bet that the Iranians didn’t believe it was a coincidence.

“We know from experience that the Iranians see hostage-taking as a valid way of conducting their own foreign policy.

“Right now North Korea also has taken hostages –three American hostages written about today in the papers.

“We know from experience the Iranians seek hostage-taking as a valid way to conduct foreign policymaking, and they’ve also gotten the message, at least from the previous administration, that it can be a very profitable policy as well.

“President Obama played right into their hands.

“There’s something else President Obama did that we just learned about, and that’s why I wanted to speak this today.

“Politico had a major exposé on Monday of this week.

“The headline was ‘Obama’s hidden Iran deal giveaway.’

“Around the same time President Obama was sending cash to Iran, he also released seven Iranians who’d been arrested by the United States.

“The president downplayed the crimes that these individuals committed.

“He said that it was a ‘one-time gesture’ to help grease the skids for his Iran deal.

“According to the documents obtained by Politico, the Obama administration also dropped charges and international arrest warrants against 14 other individuals.

“Some of them were wanted for serious threats to our own American national security.

“One man was charged with trying to buy thousands of assault weapons and send them to Iran.

“Another was charged with conspiring to get thousands of pieces of equipment with nuclear applications.

“The scheme included hundreds of U.S.-made sensors for uranium enrichment centrifuges in Iran.

“These centrifuges were a big reason that we were concerned about Iran’s nuclear program in the first place.

“According to the article that came out Monday, ‘As far back as the fall of 2014, Obama administration officials began slow-walking some significant investigations and prosecutions of Iranian procurement networks operating in the U.S.’

“As one expert told Politico, ‘This is a scandal.’ She said, ‘It’s stunning, and hard to understand why we would do this.’

“Republicans in Congress warned about this kind of thing from the very beginning.

“President Obama was so interested in getting a deal – that he got one in my opinion has been very bad for the United States. And not just bad for the United States—bad for the world. Because Iran with a nuclear weapon makes the world less safe, less secure and less stable.

“President Obama was has this as part of his legacy. But I will tell you, strategic patience has failed.

“Secretary of State Tillerson said so last week, and I agree with him completely.

“I am glad to hear our top diplomat recognize this – and I’m glad to see the Trump administration doing a comprehensive review of the Iran nuclear agreement.

“The last president put international opinion first when it came to foreign policy. We see this all around the world.

“This president, President Trump, is showing that we will put America’s interests first.

“It’s not just in Iran where we’ve had a problem. I was recently in Asia over the break, along with a group of senators.

“We went to Tokyo. We went to Beijing to meet with the leaders in China, went around that region.

“We met with the Premier of China, the number-two person in China, and the number-three, and the number-four to talk specifically about the problems of North Korea and the region.

“North Korea has been called for a long time the land of lousy options. But there is new urgency as we see the increasing capacity of North Korea, now with their rockets, not just the rockets propelled with liquid fuel, but now with solid fuel that allows for quicker launches.

“The launch vehicles are no longer on wheels limited to the roads in North Korea. They’re now on tracks and they can go anywhere. North Korea has increased their nuclear capacity as well as their missile deliverability, and they're working on intercontinental ballistic missiles that could hit the United States.

“That's why we were at the White House yesterday for the secure briefing.

“That's why it's so critical that we focus on North Korea, and we have a president who is focused on a peaceful resolution but is not afraid to use force, as we have seen in Syria and in Afghanistan.

“Because if you want to use deterrence, you have to have a capacity -- which we have had in the United States, which is incredible, through the presidents over the years.

“You have to have a commitment to use that capacity, and we have seen from President Trump a commitment to use that capacity in Syria, in Afghanistan. You have to communicate a willingness to use that capacity, as President Trump is doing today.

“Last week, Vice President Pence traveled to the demilitarized zone between South Korea and North Korea.

“He said very clearly that when it comes to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, ‘the era of strategic patience is over.’

“North Korea has been allowed to get away with too much, for too long.

“It continues to test nuclear weapons. It continues to test missiles. It continues to use hostages as a way of getting what it wants from other countries.

“Over the weekend, we learned that North Korea arrested an American professor who was in that country.

“North Korea, like Iran has a history of taking hostages, and using them as leverage to get what it wants.

“We now know of three Americans being held in North Korea.

“The leadership of countries like Iran and North Korea need to understand that this kind of action will not succeed.

“No one wants a fight with Iran. No one wants a fight with North Korea.

“The way to avoid a fight is to show that there is a limit to the patience of civilized countries of the world.

“Which is why the age of strategic patience is now in the past.”

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