| |
WASHINGTON: Iran's main gasoline suppliers, including British, French, Swiss and Indian firms, may face tough US sanctions under a bill that sailed through a key House of Representatives panel on Wednesday.
By a voice vote, the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved legislation aimed at tightening the economic vice on the Islamic republic over its suspect nuclear programme, which the West charges hides an effort to get atomic weapons.
The measure would empower US President Barack Obama to effectively block firms that supply Iran with refined petroleum products, or the ability to import or produce them at home, from doing business in the United States.
The vote came amid expectations that Iran on Thursday would deliver its much-awaited response to a UN-brokered nuclear deal aimed at defusing mounting tensions over Tehran's atomic ambitions.
Democratic Representative Howard Berman, the committee's chairman, said the "urgency" of freezing Tehran's nuclear drive outweighed the "distasteful prospect" of inflicting considerable economic pain on the Iranian people.
Berman said he hoped "to maximise the chances that Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism, will be prevented from acquiring the capacity to produce nuclear arms" and warned "we have very little time to lose".
Because of a lack of domestic refining capacity, oil-rich Iran is dependent on gasoline imports to meet about 40 per cent of domestic consumption.
Iran gets most of its gasoline imports from the Swiss firm Vitol, the Swiss/Dutch firm Trafigura, France's Total, the Swiss firm Glencore and British Petroleum, as well as the Indian firm Reliance.
The new legislation would expand the criteria under which a company could face US economic sanctions under a 1996 law targeting investments over more than 20 million dollars in Iran's oil and gas infrastructure.
The measure would also target firms that help Iran import gasoline, including companies that fund the shipments, shipping firms, or their underwriters.
While the bill enjoys overwhelming support among US lawmakers, it allows Obama to waive the sanctions on national security grounds – something all of his predecessors have done under the 1996 legislation.
Jeffrey Feltman, acting US assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, later told the committee that the Obama administration was ready to apply "increased pressure if negotiations stall or prove fruitless".
"The opportunity for engagement is genuine, but it will not be open-ended if Iran continues to refuse to fulfil its obligations. We are not going to talk simply for talking's sake," he said.
Feltman also said that the US State Department had opened a preliminary investigation into whether about 20 firms were in violation of existing US sanctions laws on Iran.
But he cautioned that US officials had already found that Iran sometimes trumpets agreements that turn out not to be real.
A small group of dissenters on the committee opposed limiting the US president's options.
Republican Representative Jeff Flake warned against efforts to "tie the hands" of the White House, saying that decades of unilateral US sanctions on Cuba had "diminished the prospects" for US diplomacy there.
"I fear we will go down that road here," he said.
Democratic Representative Barbara Lee said the measure would "undermine" Obama's authority.
And Republican Representative Ron Paul asked rhetorically "how would we react if someone closed down our oil imports?" and warned that sanctions "are an act of war".
But Democratic Representative Gary Ackerman said Iran's nuclear programmeme was deeply destabilising and stressed: "If you don't want war, it seems to me that you must back the toughest possible sanctions."
- AFP/so
|
