Washington, October 18: A flurry of congressional measures aimed at toughening US sanctions on Iran to pressure the Islamic republic to abandon its suspect nuclear program will likely have little to no impact, experts say.
Congress sent President Barack Obama legislation on Thursday that bars foreign firms that sell petroleum products to Iran from winning US government deals.
Lawmakers are also studying a number of other measures to punish Iran, which Western powers and Israel claim is seeking to develop an atomic bomb. Tehran has denied the allegations and insists it has only a civilian nuclear energy program for peaceful purposes.
The draft bills aim to provide Obama with the means to sanction Tehran, should his diplomatic outreach fail.
“I think what Congress is doing is all too predictable given the political utility of passing these kinds of measures in this environment. But I don’t think it is a particular asset to American diplomacy,” Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution, told AFP.
“We have at this stage at least a reasonable beginning to a diplomatic process with Iran. These measures I think only create the prospect for the administration to be working against itself.”
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed legislation allowing state and local governments and pension funds to end investments in firms that have 20 million dollars or more invested in Iran’s petroleum or natural gas operations.
The divestment measure does not directly impose sanctions on Iran but shields states and local governments from lawsuits if they pull their money out of such businesses.
The increased congressional activity comes in the wake of revelations that Iran had kept secret for years an underground nuclear fuel facility near the holy Shiite city of Qom.
But Maloney said there was “very little prospect” that the legislation pending in Congress, dominated by Obama’s Democratic Party, would have the intended impact of changing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
“In general, we have seen that sanctions against Iran have not been effective. What they do is they drive up the cost of Iranians doing business,” said Indiana University professor Jamsheed Choksy.
“The current sanctions that have just been passed by Congress and the future ones that they are also contemplating are also likewise not to be effective.”
The United States has imposed sanctions on Iran for the past three decades since the two countries severed ties in the wake of the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the US-backed shah.
Maloney pointed instead to multilateral sanctions, noting that only “broad-based and widely enforced” measures are truly effective and cautioning that US congressional action “could only alienate some of the most important allies of Iran.”
Key players Russia and China — both veto-wielding United Nations Security Council members — have long opposed tougher sanctions on Iran.
Despite being a major oil producer, Iran lacks domestic refining capabilities and relies on imports to meet 40 percent of its gasoline needs.
With US lawmakers eager to force Iran to bow to global demands to freeze its nuclear drive, the House Foreign Affairs Committee said it would take up on October 28 the punishing sanctions bill.
The Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act is directed at firms heavily invested in Iran’s energy sector or that provide help to boost the Islamic republic’s domestic production.
The measure would also hit companies that provide Iran with gasoline or help its imports, notably by providing ships or shipping services, as well as insuring or financing such activity.
But Georgetown University professor Daniel Brumberg said he was “dubious that even enhanced sanctions, including sanctions on refined petroleum, would compel Iran to bend to Western demands.”
Tehran would consider such a measure “as a hostile act designed to undermine the regime and would become even more defiant,” he said.
Demonstrating readiness to implement tougher sanctions could prove useful, “but only so long as the administration is ready to accompany that with carrots and incentives,” added Brumberg.
–Agencies