Congressional Republicans and Democrats are proceeding with the most aggressive crackdown on Iran since former President Barack Obama’s first term.
House and Senate lawmakers unveiled separate sanctions legislation last week, just in time for the 2017 AIPAC policy conference, which began Sunday. The legislation, which has critical bipartisan support on both ends of the Capitol, imposes mandatory sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile program and tightens enforcement of an international ban on selling weapons to Iran. The packages diverge in one key area — the sanctioning of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for terrorist activites — that holds significant policy ramifications and the threat of political pain, as well.
The often slow-moving Senate took the more aggressive approach, applying the terrorist sanctions to the IRGC. “This legislation demonstrates the strong bipartisan support in Congress for a comprehensive approach to holding Iran accountable by targeting all aspects of the regime’s destabilizing actions,” Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker said when announcing the bill. “These steps will allow us to regain the initiative on Iran and push back forcefully against this threat to our security and that of our allies.”
To sanction the IRGC for terrorist activites would be no small thing. The U.S. government has never designated a government entity as a foreign terrorist organization, even one like the IRGC, which is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers during the Iraq War. Previously, only the Quds Force, a subcomponent of the IRGC, has faced terrorism sanctions.
President Trump’s administration has declined to use existing law to label the entire IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization, in part because national security officials worry that it would impede tacit coordination against the Islamic State in Iraq, if not lead Iranian-backed militias to attack U.S. forces.
The sanctions could also hurt Iran’s economy by deterring foreign investment in companies controlled by the IRGC. That’s why Iran hawks love the idea so much, but the Obama administration never pulled the trigger on such sanctions, and proponents of the Iran deal say it could shatter the nuclear pact. Any U.S. action to hurt Iran’s economy violates the nuclear deal, according to the National Iranian American Council, because the nuclear deal calls for Western powers to “refrain from any policy specifically intended to directly and adversely affect the normalization of trade and economic relations with Iran.”
Corker has good reason to brag about the bipartisanship. The legislation has seven Democratic co-sponsors, including five who voted for Obama’s Iran deal. That means it has 59 votes, one shy of a filibuster-proof majority, even before the debate begins.
The House version of the bill doesn’t contain that language, but the designation has Democratic there as well. “I, personally, would not be opposed to having terrorism in our bill as well,” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told the Washington Examiner. “What we want, however, and what was important and what we worked on to emphasize, is we believe strongly that this does not implicate the JCPOA, the nuclear deal.”
Corker doesn’t plan to let those worries stand in the way of his sanctions package. House members will have to vote on the IRGC language in order to pass legislation identical to the Senate so it can be sent to Trump’s desk.
“Sen. Corker will continue to work with the administration and his colleagues in both chambers of Congress to advance this important legislation,” a Foreign Relations Committee spokeswoman told the Washington Examiner. “Each element in the bill has received strong bipartisan, bicameral support, and we do not expect the IRGC provision to be a sticking point as we move forward.”
That’s where the gamesmanship on the House side may be coming into play. By deferring to skeptics, however temporarily, House Republicans created an opportunity to create a wedge issue to use against any Democrats who support the current House bill but oppose the IRGC proposal.
“Certain Republicans would welcome the chance to force Democrats to take what shouldn’t be, but might be, a tough vote, specifically one designating the IRGC, which has the blood of hundreds of Americans on its hands,” a senior official at a pro-Israel organization closely involved in the Iran sanctions fight told the Washington Examiner. “Democrats know that. That’s yet another reason why Democrats would be willing to see IRGC sanctions added in one form or another to the broader legislation.”
Either way, Iran hawks are confident that it’s only a matter of time before the IRGC feels the pain of the sanctions.
This story was corrected to note that the Senate bill would sanction the IRGC for terrorism, but does not label them a foreign terrorist organization.
