On the recordJune 24, 2010
I thank the gentlelady for yielding. And in response to the previous speaker, I will remind my colleagues that sanctions did work in South Africa, and that South Africa gave up its atomic weapons program. The threat, my friends, in Iran is crystal clear, and its regime closes in on a nuclear weapon. So a crystal clear response by us is urgent. While I support this bill, much of this legislation, unfortunately, is a muddle. Good sanctions, good sanctions in this bill are weakened by delays and by the possibility of waiver after waiver. For this, the Obama administration gets the main blame. From the beginning, it has insisted on excessive leeway to implement new sanctions. It doesn't want to be forced into dramatic action. So, yes, we do provide the tools with this bill. They're in there. But there is little guarantee that those tools will be used. For example, the House-passed bill aimed to target Iran's energy sector. Yet with this conference report, a foreign oil company assisting Iran's petroleum sector could avoid even the investigation required to sanction it for at least 1 year. And the many companies from China and elsewhere rapidly building Iran's energy facilities today will be surely exempted from these sanctions. This report's aggressive financial sanctions rightly aim at Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps. While important, they too can be waived. The so-called 'mandatory financial sanctions' aren't even mandatory.
