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Senate Votes to Extend Sanctions Against Iran Senate Votes to Extend Iran Sanctions Authority
(about 7 hours later)
WASHINGTON — The Senate voted on Thursday to extend American sanctions against Iran for a decade, sending to President Obama a measure that supporters said would help ensure that the United States could fully respond if Iran were to violate its obligations under the nuclear agreement. WASHINGTON — The Senate voted unanimously on Thursday to extend the president’s authority to impose sanctions on Iran for another decade, a largely symbolic move intended to keep pressure on Tehran to abide by the landmark nuclear accord struck last year.
Iranian officials, rankled that the legislation to extend sanctions was being considered — the House overwhelmingly passed it last month — have threatened to respond if the United States goes through with the renewal. Many of the sanctions have been suspended since the deal went into effect this year. But senators said that the 99-to-0 vote would help ensure that the United States could quickly reimpose sanctions if Iran violated its obligations under the agreement.
The 99-to-0 vote Thursday showed the desire of lawmakers to maintain a tough posture toward Iran amid uncertainty over the future of the nuclear agreement, which President-elect Donald J. Trump railed against during his campaign. “This sanctions regime is how we hold Iran accountable, strengthen our security and deter Iranian hostility towards our allies, especially the state of Israel,” said Senator Gary Peters, Democrat of Michigan. “Diplomacy is always our preferred course of action, but it does not work in a vacuum. It only works if it is backed up with credible deterrence.”
The vote, even if mostly symbolic, is bound to inflame conservatives in Iran who complain that the country has received too few of the benefits it expected from the lifting of international sanctions in January.
Opponents in Iran have been using the issue in an effort to unseat the moderates backing President Hassan Rouhani, whose government negotiated the pact with the United States, five other nations — Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia — and the European Union. Those five nations and the bloc have largely lifted their sanctions against Iran, including prohibitions on financial transfers and oil purchases.
“There will be aggressive posturing by the hard-liners within Iran,” Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, said on Thursday. “I expect that Secretary Kerry will have to have a very difficult call with Zarif,” he added, referring to Secretary of State John Kerry and Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, who was Mr. Kerry’s negotiating partner.
While the Obama administration said the vote would not change anything, the extension of the sanctions authorization will give President-elect Donald J. Trump an easy opportunity to shatter the accord if he wishes. Vice President-elect Mike Pence said during the campaign that the deal would be ripped up, though Mr. Trump, in interviews with The New York Times earlier this year, suggested that he would try to renegotiate the terms, not destroy it.
If the Trump administration tries to alter the deal or to reimpose sanctions, it could prompt Iran to violate a range of obligations, like the disabling of nuclear facilities and the sharp limits on reprocessing uranium. That, in turn, could unwind the deal, and with it, President Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement.
For Mr. Trump, the nuclear agreement will pose an early test between the pull of his campaign statements — he called the accord “the stupidest deal of all time” — and the push of political realities once he is in office.
Some hope that Mr. Trump will change course. In an interview with the BBC, the departing C.I.A. director, John O. Brennan, said that ending the agreement would be “disastrous” and “the height of folly.”
Republicans have been arguing for new sanctions on Iran — not for its nuclear activities, but over human rights violations, terrorism and the support of Hezbollah.
“Given Iran’s continued pattern of aggression and the country’s persistent efforts to expand its sphere of influence across the region, preserving these sanctions is critical,” the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said on Thursday. He said he expected the Trump administration and the new Congress to “undertake a total review of our overall Iran policy.”“Given Iran’s continued pattern of aggression and the country’s persistent efforts to expand its sphere of influence across the region, preserving these sanctions is critical,” the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said on Thursday. He said he expected the Trump administration and the new Congress to “undertake a total review of our overall Iran policy.”
Asked on Wednesday if the president would veto the extension of sanctions, the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said that the administration would review it. “The administration continues to retain substantial authorities that can be used to impose financial sanctions on the Iranian regime,” he said. A White House official said that Mr. Obama would sign the legislation, which overwhelmingly passed the House in November.
Mr. Earnest suggested, however, that the president could still sign the legislation. “There are plenty of times where the president has signed into law bills that Congress has passed that we’re not sure are entirely necessary,” he said. The measure does not affect the commitment the United States made as part of the nuclear accord to provide sanctions relief if Iran meets its obligations, the official added, and the secretary of state will retain the authority to waive all nuclear-related sanctions authorized by the legislation.
The future of the nuclear agreement with Iran is one of the major looming foreign policy questions facing the Trump administration. During the campaign. Mr. Trump pledged to dismantle the agreement deal, which he described as “the stupidest deal of all time” in the last presidential debate.
Some hope that Mr. Trump will change course. In an interview published Wednesday, the departing director of the C.I.A., John O. Brennan, said that ending the nuclear agreement would be “disastrous” and “the height of folly.”