SENATOR JOHN KERRY (D-MA): Thank you very much, Senator Lugar.
It's fallen to me, I guess, sort of to close this out.
Senator Hagel, I'm going to ask some questions. But did you have more afterwards?
SEN. HAGEL: (Off mike.)
SEN. KERRY: Well, I'm not going to be long because I've got some folks unfortunately waiting out here. But Undersecretary Burns, welcome. And I'm sorry we have to go in and out of here.
We just had actually a very wonderful moment on the floor of the United States Senate. You may have heard already. Senator Kennedy came back to vote and made the difference, I might add. And we managed to pass the Medicare bill. So that was a good moment.
You know, I just came back from a trip to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Mideast in the last few days. And I must say, I was really struck by -- two things struck me. One, the preoccupation of all of these countries with Iran.
The statement by one of those countries' leaders, quite angry, that the United States had served up to Iran, on a platter, a country called Iraq. And a feeling that they have complicated their plate significantly. We have complicated their lives significantly through our frankly lack of judgment, ineptitude, whatever.
These countries, almost all of them, I think, counseled us not to go into Iraq in the beginning. And I'm sure you're aware of that. So we're working now to try to, you know, pull complicated pieces back together. And they are complicated.
What also struck me, I was in Sharm el-Sheikh and met with President Mubarak briefly during the African Union meeting. And I can't tell you how disturbing it was to have Robert Mugabe there and to listen to some of those countries make excuses.
And it kind of struck me that we've reached a strange point in global affairs. Senator Lugar is a great student of global affairs; Senator Hagel; others in this committee. I'm not sure that leaders of past moments of history would have been quite as quiet and as undisturbed and as unmotivated to come together as the world is today.
In a sense, the world has lost outrage about Zimbabwe, about Darfur and about a bunch of other places where people are interfering, where people are blowing people up, where there's just a very clear departure from standards that folks gave their lives for and worked hard to achieve in a global context over a long period of time, most of the last century.
So, you know, it's in that context that I'm really disturbed by the administration's approach. Now, your comments, as the chairman said -- I was here for that part of it, your testimony -- is a change, but it's a change that comes in July, four months before the next election and frankly, clearly, with very little ability for this administration to do the kind of lifting that needs to be done in order to change the dynamics that we're currently presented. And I noticed in your own comments, that you talked about how you want to leave the next administration with something that is X, Y or Z. That's admirable.
But when you say we shouldn't let Iranian regime off the hook, I sort of blanched a little bit. I said, well, wait -- you know, you are. We are. That is exactly what has happened for the last seven years. They've been let off the hook. And for three and half of those years, the British, French and Germans were working diligently to try to create some kind of initiative and we just sort of, you know, gave them the stiff arm and stood at arm's distance and set up a condition -- the condition being "give up your enrichment before anything else happens" that not only has resulted in not anything else happening but has resulted in about a 400 percent increase in their enrichment activities.
Now, at some point, you got to stop and say this isn't working. It's digging a hole. And what bothers me is, you know, the world is sitting here -- and this is very disturbing. And I had a conversation -- I had the privilege of having a meeting with former Prime Minister Blair a few weeks ago. We talked about this. And it was interesting to hear his perspective now that he's departed office, sort of talking about how, indeed, you got a lot of global leaders saying, "You can't have this." But you also have a lot of global leaders who haven't really crossed the threshold of the decision of what has to be done to actually back up that policy.
And people who are good at reading the tea leaves are sitting there reading them and kind of knowing this and -- you know. So Hamas is stronger. Hezbollah is stronger. Iraq is sort of confused, we hope, perhaps coming out of that confusion; hard to tell at this point, you know. So I think you see where I'm going here. I mean, the dynamic is really -- how do you change this?
And let me just share with you, in terms of that outrage, there's been much written in recent months about the potential of either Israel or the United States or both or someone using military force to deal with Iran. Now obviously, none of us here believe that option should be taken off the table. It's an option. But there has not been a lot written about what global, unified, true sanctions would achieve.
We did it in South Africa. I was on this committee when we did it. I remember the talk about how multilateral was so much more effective than -- incidentally, in terms of the loss of outrage, Myanmar, another example, lame, lighthearted little sanctions that really do nothing. And we all know what China's interests are, et cetera.
So I don't think, Mr. Secretary, that we are doing a very good job of leveraging our morality, our values, our interests in creating the kind of unified global effort necessary to calm the world down, to deal with terror that's popping up in country after country now: Afghanistan, the Indian embassy, Baghdad, I mean, you run around.
And let me just throw a few things at you. An international arms embargo would have a profound impact. Resolution 1747 called for it, but didn't require it. Are we serious if we don't require something, we just call for it?
Resolution 1737, you could eliminate the exemption for sanctions on the Bushehr nuclear reactor project. Russia has some issues there, but that should be on the table.
A broad freeze on Iran's financial assets abroad -- Resolution 1737 and (17)47 freeze assets, but only on specific entities and individuals. You want to have an impact on Iranian middle class and technocrats and society, let's get serious about restricting the flow of capital, restricting investment, energy, et cetera.
A ban on the inspection of international flights to and from Iran, that would have a significant impact. We obviously did that for Libya after Pan Am 103. It had a profound impact on Tripoli.
A ban on worldwide investments in their energy sector, a ban on exports of refined oil or other products, a ban on purchases of Iranian oil or other trade -- there are any number of much more serious things that I don't hear enough talk about, I don't see on the international table, that I think ought to be the subject of huge discussion before we're talking about going to war again with 150,000 troops on the ground in a country where they're already pretty bogged down.
Now, I'd like you to comment on that possibility of sanctions. And the final comment I'd make is, you say in the -- in your testimony, you talk about sort of the diplomatic tool that's possible and our envoys in Baghdad and that meeting.
I happen to know how restricted our message was and has been, and I think you do too, probably. That's not, to me, a legitimate diplomatic engagement or dialogue, when basically our ambassadors or interlocutors are instructed, "Here's what you can say, and you can't go beyond it," and basically it's a message of do this or else.
So share with us strategically how we get into a better discussion of these sanctions, build this larger consortium of energy and effort, and finally, you know, begin to not necessarily hold out the punishment before you engage, as we have historically with China, with Russia, with the Soviet Union -- quite successfully, I might add, historically.
MR. BURNS: Thank you very much, Senator Kerry. On the first, broader strategic question, I think you have very accurately highlighted the reality that there's a lot more that can be done through diplomatic means, through means of tightening economic pressure, to sharpen the choice for Iranians. We have, I would submit, made some progress in that direction. The recent steps that you have taken, especially with regard to Iran's largest bank, Bank Melli, are a reminder of the impact that those kind of steps can have, but they're also a reminder that there's more that can be done.
The challenge, as you well know, is how do you mobilize others to take those steps. And that involves leadership on our part, our willingness to take autonomous steps, as we have with regard to some Iranian banks before others were prepared to do it, but it also involves us being engaged in a genuine give and take with our partners, as well, to demonstrate that we're wiling to invest in both tracks of our policy; to make clear that, you know, whenever we take a diplomatic step or think about a form of tightening pressure or a possible incentive, that what we have in mind is not just the Iranian regime and the impact it's going to have on the Iranian regime, but also the Iranian -- the broader Iranian audience, the Iranian people, for whom we're trying to sharpen this choice, but also, I think, the international coalition we're trying to build. Because there's a lot of steps that we've taken and that we may take in the future that I think may help to reinforce that international coalition and, over time, if Iran is not willing to change its course and change its behavior and meet its international obligations in the nuclear field, will enable us to build greater and greater multilateral pressure, because that, I think, is what -- and you've cited some other cases where this has been true over the last 20 or 30 years -- it's that multilateral pressure that ultimately is going to have a greater impact.
SEN. KERRY: Well, I couldn't agree with you more, but it's such a tragedy that we're only getting to this now, in July of 2008. I mean, it really seems to me this strategy was pretty obvious a number of years ago. I'm not picking on you. You weren't there. You've had a different portfolio. You're new to this role.
MR. BURNS: But no, I would just -- all I wanted to add is -- I'm sorry, Senator --
SEN. KERRY: Yeah.
MR. BURNS: -- is I think over the last couple of years in particular we have taken steps in that direction.
Sometimes they've been frustratingly slow, not because we wanted them to be slow, but because it's difficult to challenge and mobilize our partners. But you know, we have begun to move in that direction.
My only point is, there's more we can do. And I think, you know, if we're ambitious and creative about it, there's more that can be accomplished in the coming months that can put us in a stronger diplomatic position and help sharpen that choice for Iranians.
SEN. KERRY: Well, we obviously all wish that. I think that the signature of the secretary on the P-5 plus one offer letter has had an impact. And I think that goes to underscore the degree to which engagement can perhaps make a difference here.
I don't want to belabor it now. I can't -- I mean, I'd like to ask some more questions, but honestly, I'm not able to.
But it did strike me in the conversations I had in Israel that there -- while there are deep -- and you know this -- deep reservations about the ability of some of these things to perhaps have an impact; and they obviously view this in existential terms, and it's their terms -- therefore more real and immediate, and we have to be sympathetic to that; but nevertheless they did acknowledge that these other kinds of sanctions on a global basis could have a profound impact and could make a difference.
And I think how they're offered, how they are proffered is particularly important. I think that, you know, the United States needs to assume, to some degree, a different attitude here. And I don't mean by that diminishing at all our declaration of the seriousness or our commitment to resolve that one way or the other. I mean simply approaching the table, as you know, as a diplomat, in a way that allows people to come back to you and talk to you and not feel as if it's a take-it-or-leave-it, all-or-nothing, threatening kind of discussion. And I think to the degree that we were to maneuver that way, we're going to open up a lot more channels of communication and frankly open up possibilities.
So I look forward and I hope -- wish you success in that effort, obviously.
I'm told Senator Feingold, I think, is coming. I'll yield to Senator Hagel, and I'll just be in the backroom, and then I'll come back in. Thanks.