US moves to target Iran’s partners: Congress passes bill
WASHINGTON, Sept 30: The US Congress early on Saturday gave its final approval to a new set of sanctions targeting foreign countries that continue nuclear cooperation with Iran and sell it advanced weaponry.
But mindful of the situation in Iraq, lawmakers warned that nothing in this document should be ‘construed as authorising the use of force against Iran’.
Although it does not name any countries, the measure is seen as a clear warning to Russia and China, two key members of the UN Security Council that have been resisting calls for new international sanctions against Iran in response to its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.
Moscow has been involved in an 800-million-dollar project to help Tehran build a nuclear power plant in Bushehr and has been selling it modern weaponry, while Beijing has been accused of supplying it with advanced missile technology.
The bill, which passed the Senate in pre-dawn hours by voice vote and cleared the House of Representatives a day earlier, came as Iran and the European Union are engaged in delicate negotiations designed to persuade Tehran to halt its enrichment work and avoid a major international showdown.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was expected to confer with EU foreign policy coordinator Javier Solana and her counterparts from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia over the weekend to take stock of progress reached in these talks.
Following the carrot-and-stick approach adopted by Washington, the Iran Freedom Support Act states that it should be the policy of the United States ‘not to bring into force an agreement for cooperation with the government of any country that is assisting the nuclear program of Iran or transferring advanced conventional weapons or missiles’.
The measure calls for this policy to remain in effect until Iran has suspended all enrichment-related activities, committed to verifiably and permanently refrain from such nuclear work in the future or the targeted country has severed ties with its Iranian partners.
The president has been granted the right to waive provisions of the bill, if he finds that US national security interests warrant it.
Mirroring the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act that set in motion the policy of regime change there, the bill authorizes the president to provide financial and political assistance to foreign and Iranian individuals and organizations that promote democracy for Iran.
But to qualify for such aid they will have to commit to nuclear non-proliferation.
Under the measure, the US government may also award grants to pro-democracy radio and television stations that broadcast into Iran.
“We have to increase our capability to mine resources and intelligence about Iran,” US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Saturday. “And one of the challenges is that we haven’t been in the country for 26 years.”
President George Bush is expected to sign the bill into law.
Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a sponsor of the bill hailed its passage by saying that it would deny Iran “the technical assistance, financial resources, and political legitimacy to develop nuclear weapons and support terrorism.”
Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor and the top Democrat on the House International Affairs Committee, argued that the world should use every peaceful means possible “to defeat Iran’s reckless nuclear military ambitions.”
“If we fail to use the economic and diplomatic tools available to us, the world will face a nightmare that knows no end: a despotic, fundamentalist regime wedded both to terrorism and to the most terrifying weapons known to man,” Lantos said. —AFP
