A political decision - really a diplomatic decision - has been made not to move forward with the Berman bill, but that doesn't mean Congress feels the activities that are targeted by the Berman bill are okay," explained a House aide, who noted that Berman and other key legislators agree with the White House's perspective that harsh sanctions could jeopardize the possibility of engagement with Tehran because they would send a strongly adversarial signal. The idea with Berman's bill is that the Iranian leadership should have an idea of what awaits them should engagement fail, at which point it would be advanced in Congress. [emphasis added].
Unbelievable - we've tried to negotiate with Iran since at least the Clinton years - it hasn't worked. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating invading Iran and I fully understand that our options to force Iran to the negotiating table are at best limited. However, lets stop kidding ourselves - the only "engagement" that will lead to Iran giving up its nuclear weapons program will be engaging it from the air -we need to either green light Israel to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities or we need to do it ourselves. Any other option will lead to a nuclear armed Iran run by people every bit as crazy as those who are running the nuclear armed Peoples Republic of Korea.
Somehow this does not make me feel all warm and fuzzy.
Oh what are the "limited" sanctions passed by the House? Why to "cut off US export credits to foreign companies that help to provide gasoline to the Islamic Republic." The harsher sanctions in the Berman Bill? Language that "would broadly sanction foreign companies that support Iran's petroleum industry."
Alas, I still fail to feel all warm and fuzzy.
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