Rep. Randy Weber of Texas Joins Secure Freedom Radio

With experience in the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology; few U.S. legislators have the timely knowledge and experience relevant to the threats we face today. Congressman Randy Weber of the 14th Congressional District of Texas is part of that rare few, and he’s on today’s Secure Freedom Radio. Click here for the audio version.

FG: Welcome back we are joined by Congressman Randy Weber, he represents the people of the 14^th district of Texas. Serving in the United States House of Representatives among other things, on its Committee on Foreign Affairs, notably the Subcommittees on the Middle East and North Africa, and Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats, very much on our mind at the moment. He is also on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. He chairs its Energy Subcommittees, so a man with considerable responsibilities to our listeners here at Secure Freedom Radio, congressman great to have you with us, welcome sir.

RB: Thank you Frank glad to be here.

FG: You have been a skeptic I think it is fair to say and now that it has been produced rightly so, a critic of the Iran well I call it the Obama Bomb Deal. Talk about why you believe this deal should be rejected by your colleagues when they come back in September.

RB: Well it is a bad deal Frank there is no question to it. You know Benjamin Netanyahu when he came here March the third did a great speech to the joint session of Congress. I’m sad to say the president would not meet with him but took time to meet with David Letterman and do YouTube videos for different roots, but not meet with Israel our greatest ally. So I would have to argue with the president’s foreign policy or I have been saying the lack there of is not only putting us in harms way but also Israel and much of the world, and you just look around the world to see this. Now I’ve been to the classified facility you can read all the backup documents on it, I don’t have a lot of confidence the intelligence community can track everything that needs to be tracked in dealing with Iran. Iran has a history of lying, of cheating, of covert operations. I had this conversation with the Secretary of State, John Kerry, from the hearing the president said he was going to negotiate from a position of strength and power, and I said well when did you decide to give that up? Because there were five things I felt like should have been done just in the discussion itself in the negotiations. Number one, they should have made Iran if they are going to be serious about rejoining the world’s community as a good neighbor so to speak, they need to give up all their hostages first and foremost, prove their intent to be a good neighbor. Number two, they need to stop all their centrifuges and dismantle them even the ones they have been hiding they need to come clean with the anywhere anytime investigations anytime they want to look at them, not just this twenty-four day period that they wound up negotiating. Number three, they need to stop their rhetoric death to America death to Israel. You do know that Ayatollah Khamenei has called Israel a one-bomb nation. In other words once they get a nuclear bomb they drop it, Israel as we know it ceases to exist. Number four, they need to prove over a period of time – they took our hostages in 1979 and the Tehran Embassy so that’s been what thirty-six years ago. Let’s give them thirty-six months to prove that they are serious. And number five, acknowledge Israel has the right to exist because they have made no qualms that they want to destroy Israel, they want to destroy America. Why didn’t we require all that? Then once they have proven say thirty six months or twenty four months that they could be a good actor, then and only then would the sanctions begin to be released. That’s the substantive parts of the negations that I think the United States should have had up to now.

FG: Well what I think you have laid out are the terms that would make it a reasonable deal from our perspective, especially giving $150 billion dollars by some estimates to this regime under any other circumstance is really irresponsible and downright dangerous, as you pointed out in the cross examination of the witnesses in the Foreign Affairs Committee Congressman Weber. I want to turn to you though with specificity to something you have been focusing both the emerging threats context in the Foreign Affairs Committee and I know on the Science Committee, namely the threats to our electric grid, and the possibility a regime in Iran means what they say about death to America. Is it just sloganeering hasn’t been for decades but is intent on pursuing that objective, maybe able to accomplish were they to take down our grid through electromagnetic pulse, or sabotage, or other means?

RW: Well that’s exactly right Frank, and that’s why I said earlier all three of these subjects are intertwined. If you watch Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dempsey, Martin Dempsey said we didn’t want to do away with conventional weapons. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said the same thing so what does Kerry do at the end? They negotiate away the conventional weapons clause. They give that away.

FG: Potentially quite soon not just five years from now.

RW: That’s right and Iran is working on their ICBMs, and I forget who it was who said Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles. There is a reason why the first word in that is inter-continental. Now if you jump over to the electromagnetic pulse threat, a lot of people are concerned about Iran for nuclear weapons and not to mention that they export terrorism around they world, the world’s leading exporter of terrorism, and that is why they shouldn’t be getting any part of the money back at all. And I would even argue substantively with the Treasury Secretary, we would be in charge of the money and where it goes. Why should we give cart blanch approval to this terroristic regime over here and we are not going to need no sanctions. You want some money for release you say you are going to use for domestic problems at home, infrastructure, whatever, we will release the money. We will pay for better infrastructure. We aren’t let you going to export that to Hamas, Hezbollah, or any other terror organization around the world. Back to EMP, electro magnetic pulse what a lot of people don’t recognize it is not just nuclear, there is actually a system they can put it on the tip of rocket. It’s a bank of capacitors that releases electric charges. It doesn’t have to be nuclear although we are helping them build up their nuclear facilities in this administration so far. They can actually send an ICBM over here. It doesn’t have to have a nuclear warhead on it per say, they can introduce EMP into our atmosphere with a HEMP which some people would argue hemp is dangerous. It’s a high altitude electromagnetic pulse HEMP. So they can deliver a missile over here to destroy our grid or seriously adversely effect our grid, and they don’t even have to have a nuclear weapon. Why in the world would we let these people out of sanctions, release them from conventional weapons bans, and give them their money back? This administration just doesn’t understand the threat or doesn’t absolutely care.

FG: Or at the least whatever their motives at compounding that threat for sure, and I appreciate so much of your understanding Congressman Randy Weber. About this real danger to America this isn’t just to Israel or other of our allies elsewhere but to Americans as well. Congressman let me ask you one more thing if I may? You have recently co-sponsored and secured House passage of HR3009 entitled Enforce the Law for Sanctuary Cities Act. What is the problem here isn’t it illegal to have sanctuary cities already?

RW: Well great question Frank, I’ve served two terms, four years, on the Texas legislature. My second term, I was Vice Chairman of the Borders Committee. I can tell you the Texas DPS we had briefings with them, there are thirty to forty eastern religious sects coming across our southern border. Just for your information, of the almost two thousand miles Mexico states now share with the Texas border. Texas has 1,179 of those miles, almost two-thirds of that border. Texas is a big state. We understand the threat.

FG: It’s the public safety of course

RW: Oh yes absolutely, it is the public safety thank you. We understand the threat. When you talk about sanctuary cities people say we won’t prosecute you if you just come into our area, and of course Kate’s Law that is now up, was preventable. What was it? Seven time convicted felon?

FG: Yeah unbelievable

RW: I think there are two things that we are doing that are good Salmon’s bill and of course Duncan Hunter’s bill. Increasing the penalties to five-year minimum jail facility, in the United States the have to go five years minimum, period. And of course if we stop the funding for sanctuary cities, when it’s determined it can be a city, county, whatever policy is in place that they will enforce federal immigration law and not look the other way. And it encourages people to come take sanctuary in their city, then we have to shut off federal funding to that city, unless they start helping us.

FG: Congressman we are hard out of time, I thank you so much for you leadership on all of these fronts. We look forward to seeing you play that role when you come back in September and wish you best in the meantime in that glorious state of Texas of yours. Keep it up and come back to us again soon.