Royce: “We’ve got to keep up the pressure” on North Korea and Iran

Today on Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Chairman Ed Royce said that the U.S. must keep up sustained pressure on the North Korean and Iranian regimes. Key excerpts are below.

North Korea engages in talks to run out the clock:

“I think North Korea is only too happy to engage in talks. Only too happy to stretch out the clock and at the same time to get concessions in exchange for promises that history shows North Korea has never kept. So we have to be very, very careful in terms of how we deal with North Korea. I am for increasing the sanctions and the pressure on them at this time… [I]n addition to [a] credible deterrence, …you have to have that sustained pressure that comes from sanctions and our diplomatic efforts. So we’ve got to keep up the pressure…”

There’s more we can do to pressure Iran:

“I opposed the Iran nuclear deal. I don’t like it one bit. But the toothpaste is out of the tube in the sense that the previous administration, the Obama administration, basically relinquished that $100 billion into the hands of the Iranian government. And as we see from the protesters, it ends up funding terror… and funding their missile program.

“What I want to see now is that we move forward with a bill I passed into the Senate that will put… additional pressure, additional sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile program. And also the bill that’s in the Senate to put the pressure on Hezbollah. And we just passed a resolution this week… on human rights abuses because of what was done to the protestors on the street, to stand with the protestors and to put sanctions on those officials that were involved in those crimes against those young protestors.”

In his last year, Chairman Royce wants to focus on confronting the threats America faces:

“I’m at the end of my term as chairman of this committee. And there’s so much work to be done on the foreign affairs front, especially now with North Korea and Iran… I could go out and campaign… 100 percent of the time or I could focus on my work here on the Foreign Affairs Committee and our national security issues and the measures we’re trying to move through the House and the Senate. That’s what I want to do. That where I can have the most impact. It’s what I need to do.”