Congressman Brad Sherman, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade delivered the following statement concerning the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act during the initial meeting of the conference committee on April 28, 2010.

“The Iran Nuclear Program is the number one national security threat we face. The State Department identifies Iran already as the number one state sponsor of terrorism. [1] A nuclear Iran means terrorism with impunity. It means eyeball to eyeball confrontations with a hostile nuclear state, and for those who find solace in the outcome of the Cuban Missile crisis, we must ask how many nuclear confrontations do you want to have with a government that is considerably less reasonable than the one that was presided over by Khrushchev. And if a half a decade from now, a million Iranians are in the streets of Tehran to overthrow that regime, Inshallah, and that government feels it is going to fall, these are not people who are going to walk off the world stage with the shrug of their shoulders as Mr. Gorbachev did. If they’re going out, they’re going out with a bang.

“They could smuggle in a nuclear weapon or several into the cities of either the great Satan or the little Satan or both, using their terminology. Now some propose that we have sanctions that don’t hurt the overall Iranian economy. Such smart sanctions are dumb, for, as many have pointed out, [2] this regime is not going to change its behavior unless it is faced with absolutely crippling sanctions. Those sanctions being discussed in the international forum are a tiny fraction of what would be necessary to get this regime to change its behavior, for as Senator Lieberman points out, acquiring nuclear weapons is second only to regime survival in the objectives of this regime. [3]

“This is why we have to pass this bill in the strongest possible form and then consider additional legislation to create an overall program of crippling extraterritorial sanctions. It is not enough to pass laws, they have to be enforced; the main part of this bill amends and adds to the Iran Sanctions Act, which has been on the books since 1996. [4] As Chairman Berman points out, the enforcement of the existing law by the State Department - in my words, not his - make a mockery of the rule of law in the United States. [5] As Chairman Berman pointed out, the Congressional Research Service has found 21 transactions where the law required the State Department to identify, name and shame and then either waive or impose sanctions, and the State Department has deliberately failed to do so. Reports by the states of Florida, California and the GAO all identify even more such triggering transactions. The State Department’s Economic Bureau has deliberately failed to identify those transactions, and if the bill we pass is going to be anything more than a mockery, we are not only going to have to require reports on those transactions, as Chairman Berman noted, but we are going to need Congressional oversight, investigations and limits on appropriations.

“The State Department asked for additional flexibility, they asked that we reward the fact that they have illegally ignored the law by writing provisions that will allow them to do it legally. The idea of country-by-country waivers is absurd, [6] they will waive virtually every country, unless they just decide to ignore the law as an easy way to continue what has been a consistent thirteen or fourteen year policy of ignoring the Iran Sanctions Act. The bill contains language to deal with the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) [7] ; it has dozens of front agencies, we should require that they be identified and that we prevent companies from doing business with those agencies. The Senate bill that puts this forward is just a “sense of Congress”. We are not an advisory body appointed by the Secretary of State, we are the Congress. If we think something should be done, we should require the State Department to do it. The Iran Sanctions act focuses on those making investments in the Iranian oil sector. It is important that we realize Iran not only needs capital but technology, and we should impose the same sanctions on those who sell goods and services to develop Iran’s natural gas and oil fields.

[1] For more information, see Country Reports on Terrorism 2008. http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2008/

[2] For example, Clifford May, President of Foundation for Defense of Democracies,
(http://article.nationalreview.com/433534/give-crippling-sanctions-a-chance/clifford-d-may ) and Benjamin Netanyahu
(http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu-exclusive-interview-good-morning/story?id=10409244 ).

[3] As Senator Lieberman says on his website, he “believes that the current leadership of Iran will only consider stepping back from the nuclear brink when they are convinced that if they fail to do so, there will be consequences so severe that the continuity of their regime will be threatened.”
http://lieberman.senate.gov/index.cfm/issues-legislation/security-defense-and-foreign-policy#foreign.

[4] Originally called the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA), it was signed into law on August 5, 1996 (P.L. 104-172).
No firms have been sanctioned under the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA).

[5] For more information on country-by-country waivers and more on the details of the act, see Kenneth Katzman’s Congressional.

[6] Research Service report from April 9, 2010, entitled, “Iran Sanctions”. It can be accessed at http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RS20871_20100409.pdf .

[7] Also known as the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, the IRGC originally served as an ideologically-driven militia force. It is now a “vast military-based conglomerate”, according to the New York Times, that has its hands in nearly every part of Iranian society. For more information, see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/world/middleeast/21guards.html .