Home

With President Barack Obama's Dec. 31 deadline looming for Iran's cooperation on curbing its nuclear program or else face unspecified retaliation, the U.S. House of Representatives armed Obama with a possible tool to put pressure on Iran by passing sanctions against companies who provide the country petroleum.

On Dec. 15, the House passed H.R. 2194, which sanctions foreign companies that either sell refined petroleum to Iran, or help Iran with its own domestic refining capacity, by depriving those companies access to the U.S. market. The legislation passed with an overwhelming vote of 412-12.

Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, introduced the legislation seven months ago and now has 343 cosponsors. In his remarks to the House the day of the bill's passage, Berman said it is time to stop waiting for Iran to respond to diplomacy.

"Iran has had ample time to respond positively to President Obama's generous engagement offer," Berman said. "Regrettably, the response has been only one of contempt. It is time for this body to act."

The proximity of the bill's passage to Obama's long-awaited deadline is critical because to this point, Obama has embraced a "sequential" approach of engaging with Iran first before considering economic or military measures, explained Ilan Berman, vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council. However, lawmakers are now thinking much more seriously about economic pressures, he said, meaning the U.S. is starting to see sanctions as a more immediate prelude or alternative to military action.

Of course, H.R. 2194 has yet to be considered by the U.S. Senate, and down the road House and Senate versions of the bill will need to be reconciled, Ilan Berman cautioned.

"It's a substantive step, but it's the first step in a very long process," he told The Jewish State.

Dr. Matthew Levitt, director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence for The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told The Jewish State that "the weight of the vote, which was heavily in favor, suggests there is significant support" for the bill. Sanctions give the administration "more arrows in its quiver" to make it difficult for Iran to engage in deceptive financial practices that hide their nuclear-building and terrorist-sponsoring activities, he said.

However, economic sanctions can't be the only element of U.S. strategy in Iran, Levitt said, as diplomatic efforts with Iran and European countries, as well as military presence, need to remain part of the equation to formulate the most effective approach.

"All of this is not intended to actually solve your problem, but to move the ball downfield," Levitt said of economic sanctions. "Successful strategy will include all elements of national power," he added.

Dealing with Iran is also not a question of a specific ratio between diplomatic, economic, and military measures, Levitt said, but rather a careful consideration of which of those policies will work best in specific situations.

On Oct. 23, Iran ignored a United Nations deadline for responding to an international deal that would have required the country to send 75 percent of its known stockpile of low-enriched uranium to Russia and France, where it would have been processed and returned for use in a reactor in Tehran used to make medical isotopes. In September, Iran's second uranium enrichment facility was discovered in Qom.

Howard Berman stressed to the House that by many estimates, Iran would have nuclear capability by sometime next year, and "even the predictions that they could not be ready to deliver a bomb within in five years have to be re-evaluated on a shorter time frame based on recent revelations about Iran's nuclear program."

Ilan Berman said that economic sanctions prevent the U.S. from having to make a "binary choice" between either accepting a nuclear Iran or taking military action. Besides for petroleum sanctions, he said, the U.S. also needs to focus on using its trade relationships with allies in the region as leverage.

"This can't be the only thing that we have going for us," Ilan Berman said of sanctions.