Wendy Sherman: “we talked earlier today about the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act. The purpose of that bill and the purpose of this bill is…”

“we talked earlier today about the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act. The purpose of that bill and the purpose of this bill is to change the behavior of multinational corporations so as to change the behavior of the Iranian Government. This effort began perhaps with the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act over a decade ago. It worked so well vis-a-vis Libya, that we have renamed it the Iran Sanctions Act, as Libya has, indeed, changed its behavior. It is important that we clarify the law. The sponsor of the bill, the gentlelady from Florida indicated that this bill makes a number of important improvements to the Iran Sanctions Act. The first is to indicate that it covers financial institutions, insurers, LLCs and other business entities; second, that when we talk about investments in the petroleum sector, that term includes refining petroleum and it includes development of liquefied natural gas. Finally, I want to thank the gentlelady from Florida for including language in this bill that I had previously gotten into the Iran Freedom Support Act that was passed last year but which was dropped in conference. I want to thank her for putting it in this bill. That language deals with subsidiaries of U.S.-based multinationals. We currently have a ban on U.S. companies doing business with Iran, a ban on most transactions and investments. But some U.S.-based multinationals have used as a loophole through those regulations, through existing law, their foreign subsidiaries.”