 |
|
CQ:
Update: Worth rereading this post of mine from a few weeks back: tracing the roots of an Iranian oil blockade meme.The Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to consider legislation Wednesday to impose additional sanctions on Iran, but the effort appears snarled by language in the bill that would block a proposed nuclear deal with Russia.
Supporters of the new Iran sanctions want to attach the bill, now in unnumbered draft form, to the Senate’s fiscal 2009 defense authorization bill, one of a few pieces of legislation with a good chance of enactment this year.
To make the sanctions more palatable to some lawmakers, they have weakened the bill, but the Russia language remains a sticking point.
“It’s just very much in our national interest to try to work with the Russians in dealing with nuclear materials and proliferation issues, and this would get in the way of that,” said Democrat Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico.
Among those who have weighed in with their concerns are Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s chairman, Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., and its ranking Republican, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, all of whom have written to the Finance Committee’s chairman, Max Baucus, DMont., and ranking Republican, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa.
Biden and Lugar wrote that the language “would likely make it impossible to obtain Russian agreement on further measures and would thus preclude the possibility of broad cooperation on additional U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran.”
Opponents of the nuclear deal criticize Russia for providing nuclear fuel and conventional weapons to Tehran.
But supporters of the deal say the United States needs Moscow’s help in further isolating the regime, which they accuse of developing nuclear weapons. Russia is “a country that we have to have working with us if we’re going to be effective in diverting Iran from developing nuclear weapons,” Bingaman said.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the influential pro-Israel lobby, weighed in Tuesday, sending a letter to Finance Committee members in support of the bill. ...