Obama Regime Says No Stricter Sanctions for Iran

It's almost as if Obama wants Iran to get nukes.  How else can he explain

Read from Joshua Pundit:

White House Opposes New Iran Sanctions Approved By The Senate 94-0

 

The Obama White House is now opposing new, stricter sanctions against Iran after the U.S. Senate approved them 94-0:

The White House announced its opposition to a new round of Iran sanctions that the Senate unanimously approved Friday, in the latest instance of Congress pushing for more aggressive punitive measures on Iran than the administration deems prudent.

On Thursday, Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) introduced the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which the Senate passed 94-0. The new legislative language would blacklist Iran's energy, port, shipping, and shipbuilding sectors, while also placing new restrictions on Iran's ability to get insurance for all these industries. The legislation would also vastly expand U.S. support for human rights inside Iran and impose new sanctions on Iranians who divert humanitarian assistance from its intended purpose.

"The window is closing. The time for the waiting game is over," Menendez said on the Senate floor Thursday night. "Yes, our sanctions are having a demonstrable effect on the Iranian economy, but Iran is still working just as hard to develop nuclear weapons."

But the White House told several Senate offices Thursday evening that the administration was opposed to the amendment. National Security Spokesman Tommy Vietor sent The Cable the administration's official position, explaining the White House's view the sanctions aren't needed and aren't helpful at this time.

"As we focus with our partners on effectively implementing these efforts, we believe additional authorities now threaten to undercut these efforts," he said. "We also have concerns with some of the formulations as currently drafted in the text and want to work through them with our congressional partners to make the law more effective and consistent with the current sanctions law to ensure we don't undercut our success to date." 

The real story, of course is that the new sanctions threaten to undercut the administration's ability to water them down by issuing waivers to most countries on abiding by them..just as they did with the last set of sanctions. That's why. although there's been a certain amount of economic turmoil, it hasn't stopped Iran from pursuing its illegal nuclear weapons program one iota:

One of the White House's chief concerns is that Congress is not providing the administration enough waivers, which would give the United States the option of negating or postponing applications of the sanctions on a case-by-case basis.

The White House also said that secondary sanctions should apply only to those Iranian persons and entities that are guilty of aiding Iran's nuclear and missile programs. The new legislative language would designate entire categories of Iranian government entities to be sanctioned -- whether or not each person or entity is directly involved in such activities.{...}

"The truth is that the U.S. Congress continues to lead a comprehensive and unrelenting international sanctions program against the Iranian regime despite a comprehensive and unrelenting campaign by this administration to block or water down those sanctions at every move," a senior GOP Senate aide told The Cable. "We beat them 100-0 last year and while they tried to kill this amendment more quietly this time, we beat them again 94-0. Hopefully House and Senate negotiators will stay strong and resist the administration's strategy to dilute these sanctions in conference." 

Actually, if the Obama Administration really wanted to stop Iran's nuclear program in a heartbeat, all they'd have to do would be to forbid any U.S. bank from doing transactions with any bank processing Iran's oil payments, or any insurance company insuring Iran's oils shipments from doing business with American citizens or financial outlets.

That's exactly how President George W. Bush dealt with outlets like the BCCI that were financing terrorism, and it's one of the few things he got right. The world's banking system is still wired into New York, and the inability to process oil payments or insure cargoes would pretty much end the game.Even the Russians and the Turks would have to comply.

Instead, we've been taking half measures while the centrifuges turn and having them undercut by the President Obama and his team, sheer foreign policy geniuses that they are.

And this is just another example.