August 1, 2012 | Quote
White House and Congress Are in Step Over Iran Sanctions
The White House and Congress raced to impose more punishing sanctions against Iran on Tuesday, as that country’s nuclear ambitions resurfaced in the presidential election campaign after Mitt Romney’s pledge to give Israel unstinting support in its confrontation with Iran.
The new sets of measures, which target Iran’s oil and petrochemical sectors as well as its shipping trade, intensify existing sanctions intended to choke off the revenue that Iran reaps from its two largest export industries. While they do not represent a quantum leap in pressure, they address a potential weakness in the continuing effort: Iran’s increasingly adroit maneuvering to circumvent sanctions by selling its oil through foreign banks or for alternative means of payment, like gold.
The flurry of activity on Capitol Hill and at the White House reflects both diplomatic and domestic political calculations. Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program are at a standstill after several months, leaving many lawmakers frustrated and administration officials conceding that the pressure campaign has not persuaded Iran’s leaders to change course.
Election-year politics have also supercharged the political atmosphere, with Mr. Romney, the presumptive Republican challenger, suggesting during a weekend visit to Israel that he would take a far tougher line against Iran than President Obama. These latest sanctions, like previous measures against Iran, have drawn lopsided bipartisan support in Congress.
Even though the White House measures were announced just days after Mr. Romney’s comments in Israel, officials said they had nothing to do with Mr. Romney’s statements. Both the administration’s and Congressional sanctions have been in the works for months. Campaign officials also said that for all his criticism, Mr. Romney’s prescriptions for dealing with Tehran do not differ much from the president’s.
“Romney likes to sound tougher on Iran, but when you really delve into the specifics, there’s not a lot of difference there from what the administration has done or is already doing,” said Colin H. Kahl, a former Pentagon official who is an adviser to the Obama campaign. “A lot of this is Romney describing our current policy and masquerading it as criticism of the president.”
A spokesman for Mr. Romney, Ryan Williams, said in a statement released after the sanctions were announced that Mr. Obama’s reluctance to confront Iran “has imperiled our allies and jeopardized our national security.” He also cited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who said that the diplomatic efforts had not made an “iota” of difference in Iran’s behavior.
The White House and Congress have clashed over how to deal with Iran: the last major Iran sanctions bill was passed over the heated objections of the administration.
But this time, the White House worked closely with lawmakers. Officials said Mr. Obama’s executive order was intended to complement the legislation, not to pre-empt or derail it.
After weeks of negotiation, House and Senate leaders agreed late Monday on new measures targeting Iranian shipping, not only of oil but also of a wide variety of other products. The House was set to vote as soon as Wednesday, while the Senate leaders — Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader from Kentucky, and Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader from Nevada — also signaled that they would move the legislation forward quickly.
“The idea is to up the ante to the greatest extent possible,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon. “From a foreign policy standpoint, trying to find every possible way to up the ante makes sense.”
Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a supporter of tougher sanctions, said the new measures were “a major upgrade of the sanctions regime.” But he noted that the goal of the sanctions is to change the political calculus of Iran’s leadership, increasing pressure to the point that it agrees to resolve concerns about whether its nuclear program is peaceful, as it insists, or aimed at producing a bomb, as many experts contend.
“There’s no evidence to date that the sanctions have achieved that objective,” he said.
Administration officials took pains to point out the economic damage the sanctions have inflicted on Iran. European and American sanctions have driven down its oil exports by 40 percent to 50 percent, depriving Iran of $9 billion in revenue every quarter, said Robert J. Einhorn, the State Department’s special adviser on nonproliferation.
Iran’s currency, the rial, has lost 38 percent of its value since the sanctions law was passed last January.
“These sanctions are really beginning to sink in,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, who quoted Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as saying they were the toughest sanctions Iran had ever faced.
Most measures announced Tuesday seek to close loopholes in earlier sanctions. The United States will now blacklist any financial institution that receives payments for Iranian oil, which will prevent Iran from using foreign banks or its national oil company, in lieu of the Central Bank of Iran, as an agent to process oil transactions.
A loophole remains, though: Twenty countries that have already been exempted by the United States from existing sanctions because they made significant reductions in oil purchases would also be exempted from these latest measures.
The Treasury Department used a 2010 law to bring sanctions against two banks — Bank of Kunlun in China and Elaf Islamic Bank in Iraq — that it says have helped blacklisted Iranian banks to gain access to international markets. The Iranian banks, it said, are involved in terrorism and weapons proliferation.
“We’ve been under pressure for a while to use this authority and we’ve shown we’re prepared to do that, regardless of where the bank may be,” said David S. Cohen, under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence.
New sanctions against Iran have long had broad bipartisan support, though the latest legislation nonetheless had partisan hues, underscoring the election-year politics of one of the nation’s most vexing foreign policy issues.
“Israel has made it pretty clear that they’re not going to sit by much longer,” Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, said Tuesday, “so we need to apply pressure. I think we’ve been slow in doing it.”