House lawmakers will vote to extend sanctions authority on Iran when they return for a post-election session next week, GOP leadership announced late Thursday.
An extension authored by House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ed Royce will be introduced and considered next week, according to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s schedule. The underlying bill has been a fundamental plank of U.S. policy toward Iran since 1996, but it is due to expire at the end of the year. President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran makes its extension a little dicier than usual.
“The Iran Sanctions Act was enacted to curb Tehran’s support for terrorism and its very dangerous weapons proliferation,” Royce said in October. “It should remain in place until the regime stops exporting terror and threatening us and our allies with deadly weapons.”
The nature of the extension act will be critical, however. A bipartisan group of lawmakers want to add sanctions that target Iran’s ballistic missile program, which has continued to conduct tests since the Iran deal. Other Senate Democrats support extending the sanctions act without any additional policy changes, in part due to concern that Iran would argue that the new sanctions violated the nuclear deal.
“For the United States to maintain its unambiguous ability to immediately snapback sanctions in the coming years, ISA must be renewed or we will surrender this critical capability,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., wrote in October letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “Reauthorization is a significant step that will send a strong signal to Iran that the United States remains fully committed to vigorously enforcing the [nuclear deal].”
The Obama administration has argued America has the authority to “snapback” sanctions even if the sanctions act is not extended, but they’re not saying much else about Royce’s bill at the moment. “We’ll decline to comment on legislation before it is introduced,” a State Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner Thursday.
