WASHINGTON - In advance of United States President Barack Obama's
end-of-the-year deadline for Iran to respond to negotiations aimed at bringing
a halt to the Islamic Republic's nuclear program, the US House of
Representatives passed a bill on Tuesday to sanction companies that sell
refined petroleum to Iran.
The senate's version of the bill appears to be held up after the State
Department issued a letter to the Foreign Relations Committee chairman, John
Kerry, urging the senate to slow down the progress of the Iran sanctions bill
to the floor for a vote until the new year.
''[W]e are entering a critical period of intense diplomacy to impose
significant international pressure on Iran. This requires that we keep the
focus on Iran. At this juncture, I am concerned that this legislation, in its
current form, might weaken rather than strengthen international unity and
support for our efforts,'' wrote Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg last
Friday, in a letter first leaked by Foreign Policy Magazine.
The passage of the house bill comes at a particularly sensitive time, with the
US saying on Tuesday that it would investigate a report by the Times of London
that Iran was working on a trigger for a nuclear bomb. The Times reported that
foreign intelligence agencies dated documents related to the accusation to
early 2007. In Tehran, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ramin
Mehmanparast, dismissed the claim as a "scenario" hatched by Western powers.
The Obama administration's desire to slow down the sanctions legislation in the
senate comes as the White House attempts to mobilize international support -
particularly among Iranian trade partners such as Russia and China - for
multilateral sanctions.
The bills passed by the house and introduced in the senate would push Obama to
take a more unilateral path on sanctions, a move seen by many analysts as
ultimately unhelpful to the goal of bringing pressure on Tehran while not
causing undue suffering for the Iranian populace.
The house bill, which passed with an overwhelming majority of 412-12, was
hailed as a victory by legislators who compared the proposed sanctions against
Iran to the sanctions used to bring an end to the apartheid government in South
Africa. They warned that a failure to engage in unilateral sanctions would
endanger Israeli security if Iran completed construction of a nuclear weapon.
Iran has insisted that its nuclear program is for civilian energy purposes
only.
''A nuclear-armed Iran would spread its influence by intimidating its
neighbors; it would, with near impunity, continue to support terrorists and
destabilize the Middle East; it would spark an arms race in the region that
would tear the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to shreds; and, most
frightening of all, it could, in light of Iran's repeated threats to wipe
another nation off the map, result in the actual use of nuclear weapons,'' said
the bills sponsor, Representative Howard L Berman, before the vote.
Although only 12 representatives voted against the bill, opponents of the
legislation argued that the unilateral approach would impose the greatest
hardship on the Iranian public, a large number of whom protested the
re-election of Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad in June.
"There is nobody in the Iranian government ... that's not going to get their
gasoline," said Representative Earl Blumenauer. "It's going to [impact] on the
people of Iran."
Major US Jewish groups were nearly all in favor of the legislation.
''[The American Israel Public Affairs Committee -AIPAC] strongly applauds
today's overwhelming, bi-partisan and momentous house passage of the Iran
Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act, legislation that seeks to reinforce American
diplomacy by dramatically increasing economic pressure on Iran to stop its
illicit pursuit of nuclear weapons,'' said a statement released by AIPAC after
the bill passed the house.
J Street, the new "pro-Israel, pro-peace'', endorsed the legislation last week.
Americans for Peace Now (APN), which advocates for a peaceful resolution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, opposed the sanctions legislation because ''it is
about sanctions that target the Iranian people, in the hope that if the people
become miserable enough they will pressure their government to change course.
This is a strategy that few experts believe will work, and a strategy that has
a very poor track record in other contexts (Iraq, Cuba, Gaza).''
''Indeed, experience has demonstrated with sanctions like these, the most
likely and immediate result will be a backlash by the people of Iran against
the United States, not against the Iranian regime,'' APN concluded.
Although several experts have suggested a vote in the senate is unlikely before
the end of the year, the White House has acknowledged that barring a
breakthrough in negotiations with Tehran before the new year, the US will move
closer to imposing sanctions.
''I don't think anyone can doubt that our outreach has produced very little in
terms of any kind of a positive response from the Iranians,'' Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton told reporters. ''Certainly, additional pressure is going
to be called for.''
It was hoped that Tehran would agree to a proposed agreement to export most of
its enriched uranium for processing in Russia and France, but the chance of
Tehran accepting this arrangement seems increasingly unlikely.
The Obama administration has focused its lobbying for sanctions on the
international stage in hopes of gaining crucial allies - specifically Russia
and China, which hold veto power in the United Nations Security Council - if a
multilateral sanctions regime is to be agreed on in the UN.
In his Nobel Peace Prize speech on December 10, Obama alluded to nuclear
weapons programs in Iran and North Korea and emphasized the importance of
enforcing international laws and using multilateral sanctions.
''I believe that we must develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough
to actually change behavior - for if we want a lasting peace, then the words of
the international community must mean something. Those regimes that break the
rules must be held accountable. Sanctions must exact a real price,'' said
Obama. ''Intransigence must be met with increased pressure - and such pressure
exists only when the world stands together as one.''
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