With respect to the stated positions, public positions of iran and its rhetoric, no. It hasnt changed and it very inflammatory and very threatening. Do you think, excuse me, mr. Secretary, because i have one minute left. Do you believe its still the goal of the Supreme Leader to destroy israel and destroy the United States . Well, when you say do i believe . Do you think, do you believe, what do you think of that position . I think their rhetoric is dangerous and threatening, incredibly counterproductive and damaging to any potential rational relationship. Reclaiming my time, one other question. I want to reclaim my time. My but is im reclaiming my time. My other question is this, mr. Secretary. If Iran Gets Nuclear weapons, will saudi arabia, turkey and egypt also rush to get Nuclear Weapons as well. If iran got a Nuclear Weapon, there would be an arms race in the region for certain, which is one of the reasons why they arent going to get a Nuclear Weapon. I want to finish. Absolutely, mr. Secretary. Go ahead. I want to finish. There are lots of people in the world who use outrageous, outlandish rhetoric. They play to their street and play to their constituency and have no means of actually implementing what they are saying. But we take seriously the threat of iran and the potential for a Nuclear Weapon. Thats why the centerpiece of the Foreign Policy is they will not get a Nuclear Weapon while this president is president of the United States. Warren vargas of california. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman, and thank you very much, mr. Secretary, for being here. I wan to premise my remarks, i have nothing but respect in regard to you personally and professionally. One of my biggest disappointments politically was that you wouldnt become president. We worked hard in california for you and i think you would have been a magnificent president. Im not a socalled friend, im a believer. However, when it comes to this deal, im against it. I do think items naive and i dont think it makes us safer unfortunately. I dont think it makes our allies safer, especially israel. Instead of agree with those that say sanctions were working. We didnt ratchet them enough. We should have tightened them down more. The question comes whether they want to function in the economy or Nuclear Weapons capability weapons program. I think we need a corollary the axiom nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. Instead we should say we wont agree to anything until everything is agreed. We want that comprehensive deal first. Has iran changed calculus . I dont know. Im not skeptical. Im not skeptical at all. I havent changed calculus. I think we want a Nuclear Weapons program. I do want to give you time to answer those questions. I wont go all the way until theres two seconds left and then say, mr. Secretary, would you like to answer those 50 questions. I do want to know, it seems to be naive, to be frank, on its face. Well, first of all, congressman, im really pleased that you think i would have made a good president , and i appreciate your support in that effort. I hate to disappoint you ive come up with something in conjunction with the administration and our efforts are naive. I think it is anything but naive. Anything but. I think that for many reasons ive been thinking about and working on the iran file, so to speak, for a lot of years. Ler a lot of people who have a different calculation about what iran might or might not want to do. Its all well and good and sit here and say theoretically ratchet up sanctions and drive them into a place they will crush. You know what, russians and chinese wont be with you doing that. Ultimately the europeans might not be either. As you ratchet them up, and they think its unreasonable based on their willingness to explore diplomacy, you lose them, too. Guess what youve done . Youve undone the sanctions not reinforced them. Let me go a step further. Theres a lot of people in the Intel Community who will sit and tell you, and i urge you to get briefed on it, who will tell you theres a whole school of thought in iran, the hardliners, who welcome the idea the United States might whack them, because they think they will be heroes in the street and they think they will be true to the revolution. They think as a result they will actually be stronger as a regime. There are many people who believe if the regime got into real extremist on the economy, what would happen is the extreme leader will say im not surrendering. Were not ever going to surrender to the great satan. Now were going to go for the weapon because its the only thing we can do. Well dig deeper and go more secret and take whatever it takes but were going to get it. Thats all the United States of america understands. Thats an alternative theory to the notion you can go out and raise your sanctions add infinite um and win. Perhaps we wont get an agreement and have to do the other thing anyway. You know, one of the things i learned a long time ago is if youre going to take the nation to war, you better have exhausted all the possibilities of trying to get peaceful resolution before you do it. We are doing that now. We are going through the testing and testing to see whether or not they are serious. If not, we have all the options available to us. Theres nothing naive about what were doing. It is calculated. It may be wrong. You may find its a miscalculation. Its not miscalculation based on naive, i believe no question in my mind, if we were negotiating and pressing further, we would be inviteing a prolonged process which would drive them to want to get the weapon even more and then youd be at a place where you might get negotiations but they are even closer to having the weapon than they are today. Much more dangerous. My last few seconds, i pray youre right. Again, i encourage you. I think youre a man of great courage and i hope the best for you. Thank you. From arizona. Thank you, mr. Secretary. I have three questions and they all deal with the issue of accountability. Ill ask the three questions and then turn the time over to you. It is an alarming fact that this agreement that you struck with the iranians gives them access to 7 billion in cash. Can you assure the American People that not one single dollar of that new money coming into iran is going to be used to kill one american soldier . The second question is i dont feel like the Obama Administration has a stellar track record on the issue of accountability, from benghazi, nsa, ap, irs, to fast and furious, these are all dismal examples. Where we still dont have answers to why they happened and who is ultimately accountable. Where does the buck stop in the new deal if it doesnt work like promised p. Are you going to be held ultimately accountable, the president , who in the administration . Finally, continuing on that theme of accountability, the administration claims to not be in negotiations with iran when they, in fact, were. The state department has admitted victoria were mislead reporters when in february she denied exist earns of secret bilateral talks with iran. Turns out your department intentionally misled American People about negotiations taking place behind closed doors. How can we have the confidence the information youre giving us now is on the level, particularly since the iranians clearly have a different interpretation of the agreement than you do. Those are my questions and im very interested in your answers. Honestly, id have to go back and check. I became secretary of state february 1st. Im not sure what was said then or not said exactly or what the state of play was but let me find out. With respect to accountability, im hanging out there. Ill be account able. I have absolute confidence youll hold me accountable. I said to the chairwoman i dont think the sanctions regime will come apart. She said its the death knell of it. Were going to know in a few months. So ill be accountable. As to my very first question, with the new money they are getting, and ill take it face value that the amount youve speculated, 7 billion, with that new money coming into iran, can you assure the American People that not a dollar of that money is going to be used to kill an american soldier . Congressman, i wish i could give you that kind of assurance, i have no ability to tell you exactly what fungability there is in money in iran or where the budget goes. My prayer is that no soldier will be killed as a consequence of anything that iran chooses to do. And our hope is as a consequence of this process maybe we can get at some of those issues that are very significant between our two countries. Finally, i think this has boiled down to a disagreement of whether or not ultimately want them to continue any kind of Nuclear Program within iran versus being able to go forward and not have any kind of a Nuclear Program. When you say nuclear, do you mean Power Program . Yes, any kind of Nuclear Program, any kind of enrichment. They can get all the Nuclear Material they need for power by purchasing that from other countries. They dont need to be able to enrich that themselves. The way i look at this deal, and i understand there are a lot of components, but you mentioned earlier in your initial remarks that one of the big successes of this interim deal or sixmonth deal is that they have to way lay their 20 enriched uranium. Thats very insubstantial. Its a small quantity. They have a far larger quantity of 3 to 5 enriched materials and it doesnt take a lot to get to that next level. I think we all understand that. So it seems like a large seems to me like a great deal to get a small quantity of 20 enriched uranium for 7 billion bucks. Congressman, if they dont have theability to enrich it and they cant. They arent allowed to put in any additional enrichment facilities, they arent allowed to change that stock, so its relevant. You think its not worth six months trying to negotiate a comprehensive deal you hold their program where it is, then you make your judgment. We believe it is. You know, weve proven in the last years as we went from those 164 centrifuges to 19,000 what you get for not talking. You get closer to a bomb. So we believe its important to try to sit down and see if we can resolve this. We go now to rhode island. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, mr. Secretary, for being here and thank you to the administration for briefings and Important Information you have shared with us today. Thank you for the work youre doing. I was happy to reaffirm the commitment for iran not to enrich. It makes us safer, our allies safer. The question is whether or not this is likely to make it more likely or less likely that we prevent iran from having a Nuclear Weapon. The scepticism everyone has expressed is healthy, but i think the question is does this make it more likely we achieved this objective. I think there seemed to be very competing time lines. One time line is doing nothing and the development of a nuclear iran. The other time line is additional sanctions so severe that either iran abandons its Nuclear Ambition or the regime is brought down. Another time on the negotiation, we have questions as if nothing will happen if we dont take some action or pursue diplomatic alternative. So like everyone on the panel i hope you achieve this effort, everyone will win if we achieve a greater iran, everybody will benefit if we can. To follow up on a question, if it is true that iranians are certain if they violate this agreement that additional sanctions will be imposed, if they are certain of that, then speak to what would be the consequence of acting sanctions, additional sanctions not triggered until a default in the agreement or Effective Date a year from now or some other mechanism if, in fact, they expect it. What would be the impact on negotiations, our allies. Why wouldnt we do that as a mechanism to sort of make clear what you indicate they had already know. Because we told them we wouldnt do it while negotiating. Because our partners dont expect us to pass new sanctions while negotiating. Because our partners, if we pass them now, could get squirrely on the idea of sanctions. They will figure were doing our own thing and were not part of the team. You think thats the same view even if the sanctions are not imposed . Sanctions not imposed. It implies a lack of faith in the process and unwillingness to play by the rules our partners are playing by. The second question, mr. Secretary, i know that, and i think its an important point, interim agreement says iran reaffirms under no circumstances will iran ever seek or develop any Nuclear Weapons. As you well know, there are many steps in research and development and testing that a state may under take that are important steps to build nuclear capacity. In the past according to iaea iran has taken some steps and argued dual use because of civilian use. Is that an issue you intend and can assure us youll address in a final agreement . It has to be. Absolutely. Thats part of what we were talking about about resolving all our concerns and dealing with the larger u. N. Security council and Ballistic Missile issues. Mr. Secretary, it seems to me that the outline of the first step are creating a window of opportunity. The alternative of not proceeding aggressively in this negotiation would allow iranians to proceed unchecked, really, over the next six months or longer. It is my hope youll be successful and provide greater security to the country and allies to the region. Thank you. Mr. Jeff duncan of south carolina. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Its quite a feat to have secretary of state in front of our Committee Twice in one year. I just wanted to remind the committee its been 15 months since benghazi terror attacks that killed four brave americans including tyrone woods. Administration brought none of the perpetrators to justice or culpability in the deaths of these brave americans. In negotiating with iran the administration chose to ignore the polite of pastor abedini during negotiations and decided to release an Iranian Nuclear scientist for the iranians. That just baffles me. Mr. Secretary in negotiating with iran, you seem to give them the benefit of the doubt they will comply with the agreement, but i agree with the Canadian ForeignAffairs Minister who said we think past actions best predict future actions. Iran defied United NationsSecurity Council and iaea. Simply put iran has not earned the right to have benefit of the doubt. Iran is a bad actor. We know that. Numerous hearing pointed out iranian activity in the western hemisphere. Even the defense minister of israel acknowledges in a december 9th article in the times of israel, he states iran built infrastructure of terror in central and south africa in order to among other goals had a basis to attack u. S. These are the guys were negotiating with. Iran clearly implicated in buenos aires bombings. Abandon 190 years of policy by declaring the Monroe Doctrine era is over. What kind of message does that send . Sends wrong message to iran, china, russia about our liability in the region. Having made all those statements i have to ask, why trust iran . There has been no accountability for past actions and past links to terrorism. I have a series of yes or no questions for you. Iran is still listed by the u. S. Department of state as a state sponsor of terrorism, correct . Yes, it is. Thank you. Is iran still supporting hezbollah and hamas . Yes. Hezbollah still active in south america . Weve established that in this committee and state department agreed in complying with threat and western hemisphere threat. What impact do you think sanctions relief will have on hezbollah and other regional proxies. If we lift these and they have 7 billion, what impact do you think that will have on state sponsored terrorism. Very little. They are a 1 trillion economy. This is a tiny percentage of that. They are not banking on this money to engage in nefarious activities they take place in, which we agree with, all of them. I cited a moment ago our concern about the many other issues from Ballistic Missiles, support for terror, support for hezbollah. I mentioned hezbollah earlier. Obviously these things concern us a lot, congressman. Nowhere, nowhere, not once today, nothing that i said intimated in any way whatsoever a benefit of any doubt. I sat here and said were skeptical. I sat here and said they have to prove it. I sat here and said were going to test them. I said were not going to mention the word test. This is based on testing and verification. I dont know where you get benefit of doubt. Theres no benefit of any doubt here. This is a very skeptical and tested and focused process of verifying a program that we have to account to the world for. Let me ask you another question, then, does north korea have Nuclear Weapons . North korea does not have a program yet that is capable. They have had some explosion devices. In february 2007 north korea agreed to abandoning all Nuclear Weapons and existing Nuclear Programs and returning at an early date to a treaty on nonproliferation Nuclear Weapons and iaea safeguard. Supposedly this significant achievement committed six parties at that time to an agreement to a denuclearized p korean peninsula. Guess what, september 2008, they were back. We gave them 700 i think it was 950,000 tons of fuel if they would stop their Nuclear Weapons program. I go back to one of the gentlemen to my