June 21, 2012 | Quoted by Geoff Dyer, Financial Times
Iran Faces Fresh US Sanctions Push
The US Congress is considering imposing tougher sanctions on Iran after the latest round of diplomatic talks over Iran’s nuclear programme ended in Moscow without substantive progress.
Congress was already preparing another piece of sanctions legislation before the latest diplomatic setback in Moscow and members of both parties are pushing for stricter measures to be included in the new bill, which would further reduce Iran’s ability to export oil.
A number of leading members of Congress are also calling on the Obama administration to declare publicly that the effort to negotiate a settlement with Iran over its nuclear programme has failed.
While the state department has said it will continue with the diplomatic process, the renewed pressure from Congress underscores the limited political space that the Obama administration has in dealing with Iran, especially during an election year.
At the same time some analysts believe Iran will try to delay negotiations until after the US presidential elections, in the hope that Washington will have more room to manoeuvre.
After a third round of meetings earlier this week between Iran and the major powers in Moscow, the negotiations process came close to collapse amid no signs of any substantial agreement between the two sides.
Instead, a meeting will be held on July 3 between “technical experts” to examine the prospects of a deal on Iran’s nuclear programme – a result considered at the very low end of expectations before the Moscow meeting. Before the next round of talks, new European and US sanctions on Iranian oil exports will formally kick in.
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Florida Republican who chairs the House foreign affairs committee, said after the end of the Moscow talks that “the administration still refuses to admit that the negotiations game is up”.
She added: “More talks are not the answer, but only a dangerous diversion…. [The administration] must abandon the current ‘lather, rinse, repeat’ incremental approach and impose game-changing sanctions to compel the regime to abandon its nuclear program now.”
Her statement followed a letter to President Barack Obama signed at the end of last week by 44 senators from both parties which said that if Iran did not agree to suspend nuclear enrichment and close its Fordow enrichment facility, “we must conclude that Iran is using the talks as a cover to buy time”. If there were no progress in Moscow, the senators wrote, “we urge you to re-evaluate the utility of further talks”.
While Mr Obama faces criticism from Congress about continuing talks with Iran, the political climate in the US has also increased scepticism in Iran about whether the administration has the ability to negotiate an agreement, even if the two sides could find enough common ground.
“The big question is whether the US will be able to deliver,” says Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian nuclear negotiator who is now a visiting scholar at Princeton University. “Iran is sceptical about whether Obama is able to do much in an election year. And if Obama cannot deliver, then the P5+1 [the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany] cannot deliver.”
The House of Representatives and the Senate have both passed versions of new sanctions legislation, which impose new penalties on the Iranian energy sector, and the end of the talks in Moscow has prompted calls for the two chambers to quickly agree on a new bill. Mark Kirk, the Illinois senator who co-wrote a previous sanctions bill, said that Congress should aim to negotiate a final bill that can be sent to the president by July.
Some members of Congress are pushing for the new legislation to include much tougher measures. One idea would be to declare the entire Iranian energy sector a “zone of proliferation concern”, a legal formula that would effectively close some of the loopholes in existing legislation that allow Iran to settle payment for some of its oil exports. Another proposal is to introduce much broader restrictions on doing business with the Iranian central bank, which is already the target of existing US sanctions legislation.
“This would be a significant ratcheting up of the economic war against Iran,” said Mark Dubowitz, who is executive director of Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank and has advised members of Congress on sanctions legislation.