December 20-2013
President Obama has successfully stymied efforts in Congress to pass more sanctions against Iran this year, but there may be another effort when Congress returns in January.
The Administration’s main argument against new sanctions—although it isn’t widely reported—is the fear that new sanctions will provide evidence for Iran’s argument that Washington isn’t really interested in a diplomatic solution, but just wants to flay the Islamic Republic.
Many Republicans and some Democrats say they want to enact new sanctions, although those sanctions would not go into effect for six months to allow time for a permanent nuclear deal to be negotiated.
But all their efforts have so far been foiled.
First, plans to attach the sanctions as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act were spiked when the bill was brought up in a way that disallowed amendments.
Then, Sen. Tim Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, which must act on financial sanctions, said he was convinced new sanctions at this time were a bad idea and declined to hold any hearings “for now.”
So, the effort to get Congress to impose new sanctions before the Christmas break ran out of steam.
Whether legislators will make a new effort to pass sanctions in the new year remains unclear.
Some of those pushing for sanctions, especially Democrats, argue that new sanctions that would not take effect for six months would give the administration more leverage. “I think it could potentially strengthen your hand with a good-cop, bad-cop scenario,” said bad-cop Rep. Elliot Engel, Democrat of New York.
In the House, Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, drafted a resolution—which is not a law and not binding on the administration—laying out what Congress wanted to see in a final nuclear deal, including a complete end to all enrichment by Iran. It was to be co-sponsored by Rep. Stenny Hoyer of Maryland, Cantor’s Democratic opposite number. But the Administration leaned hard on Hoyer, who backed off from the resolution. Cantor then decided not to push anything in December.
Iran has said that any new sanctions passed into law would be a kiss of death for further talks.
But Secretary of State John Kerry didn’t say that was the reason for the Administration’s opposition. He said he was concerned about keeping the rest of the world firmly behind the sanctions effort. This has always been the Administration’s driver and the reason it has perpetually sought to weaken the sanctions spasms that Congress has gone through for years.
Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “If we appear to be going off on our own tangent and do whatever we want, we will potentially lose their [the rest of the world’s] support for the sanctions themselves—because we don’t just enforce them by ourselves, we need their help.”
He said new sanctions, even those that do not take effect for six months, “could lead our international partners to think that we’re not an honest broker and that we didn’t mean it when we said that sanctions were not an end in and of themselves, but a tool to pressure the Iranians into a diplomatic solution…. It [new sanctions] could even end up decreasing the pressure on Iran by leading to the fraying of the sanctions regime.”
Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, dismissed all the talk in Congress. “Sometimes Congress attempts to act as if they’ve done something relative to a particular issue, and to try to show that they’re being strong and make a statement,” he said. “At the end of the day, sometimes these things are only messaging and have no real substance behind them.”
He concluded: “I realized we’re sort of going through a rope-a-dope here in the Senate and that we’re not actually going to do anything.” That suggested he had concluded that Democrats were just talking tough about new sanctions for the folks back home, but had no intention of doing anything in the face of President Obama’s opposition. If that is correct, nothing will happen in January either.