[A-List] FT: US House Tightens Sanctions against Iran

["Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f6642ae6-6ba4-11dc-863b-0000779fd2ac.html>
US House tightens sanctions against Iran

By Daniel Dombey and Harvey Morris at the United Nations and Hugh
Williamson in Berlin

Published: September 25 2007 21:42 | Last updated: September 26 2007 00:52

The US House of Representatives brushed aside lobbying from European
governments and opposition from the Bush administration on Tuesday to
back a tough Iran sanctions bill that would punish energy companies
investing in the country.

The 397-16 vote on the Iran Counter-Proliferation bill, which would
make sanctions mandatory on energy companies investing more than $20m
(€14.1m, £9.9m) in the Islamic republic, came a day after Iran's
President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad gave a speech at Columbia University,
New York, and hours before he addressed the United Nations.

"Since 1999, giant companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, France's
Total, Italy's ENI and Inpex of Japan have invested over $100bn in the
Iranian energy industry, and the US has done nothing to stop them,"
said Tom Lantos, the bill's sponsor.

Legislation passed in the 1990s establishes a set of sanctions for
companies investing in Iran – ranging from banning large-scale US bank
loans for such groups to prohibiting them from participating in US
government procurement.

But that legislation also gives the US president a waiver on
introducing sanctions. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have
consistently used the waiver, but the Lantos bill would abolish it.

Nicholas Burns, the number three at the US state department, has
warned Congress that such legislation could hit the common front with
European countries in tackling Iran's nuclear programme - a message EU
diplomats have sought to reinforce.

However, the bill is far from certain to become law in its current
form, since a parallel measure in the Senate would be less
hard-hitting and would leave Mr Bush's waiver intact.

"It is the Senate that is extremely leery of doing anything that would
rankle the Europeans," said Cliff Kupchan, an analyst at the Eurasia
Group, a Washington-based consultancy.

"At the end of the day, revocation of the waiver is unlikely. That
said, the administration and Congress are going to join hands on
moving forward on new sanctions."

Mr Ahmadi-Nejad said in a speech to the UN General Assembly on
Tuesday: "In the last two years, abusing the Security Council, the
arrogant powers have repeatedly accused Iran and even made military
threats and imposed illegal sanctions against it.

"Unfortunately the Security Council, in dealing with this obvious
legal issue [of Iran's nuclear programme]...failed to uphold justice
and protect the rights of the Iranian people."

Mr Ahmadi-Nejad added people and governments were not obliged to obey
the "injustice of certain powers". Without naming the US, he said:
"These powers...have lost the competence to lead the world."

Although Mr Bush made only a passing reference to Iran in his speech
to the UN on Tuesday, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, reprised
his country's recent tough line against Tehran. Allowing Iran to
acquire nuclear weapons could destabilise the world, he told the
General Assembly.
-- 
Yoshie