Roy Blunt: “I rise to speak on an issue I feel I have spent a lot of time talking about in recent years but without much effect on…”

“I rise to speak on an issue I feel I have spent a lot of time talking about in recent years but without much effect on either of the last two administrations. This is the issue of the Iran Sanctions Act. Congress has worked in a bipartisan way to strengthen and expand the Iran Sanctions Act, but in spite of our repeated efforts, the administration has not been willing to use the tools the Congress has given them. In my mind--and I am sure in the minds of a great many of my colleagues--nothing would be more destabilizing to the Mideast region and to Middle Eastern regional security or global security than Iran's development of a nuclear weapon. I will not spend a lot of time talking about why that is because I doubt there is any Member of this body who is not aware of how dangerous this situation is or could be, which is why it is even more frustrating that we have not been able to get the administration to push a more robust set of sanctions using the sanctions policy and the sanctions tools we have given them. During the 15 years between the time the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act was passed, in 1996, and last year, no meaningful application of these sanctions was ever adopted. From 1996 until last year, no meaningful application has ever been adopted.…”