House Republicans next week will take aim at President Obama’s foreign policy by bringing up a bill that would prevent the administration from lifting some economic sanctions against Iran.
GOP leaders announced the legislation hours after House Speaker Paul Ryan confirmed lawmakers would vote on a bipartisan bill to increase sanctions on North Korea as punishment for testing a nuclear bomb earlier this week.
“Next week, the House will consider two bills that will provide a more robust response to the threats facing our nation than this administration has offered,” said Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. “Iran has repeatedly violated multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions, while North Korea is allegedly testing more powerful nuclear weapons. The Obama administration’s response to both has been the same: weak and inadequate.”
Republicans have heaped criticism on Obama’s foreign policy in recent weeks, and are eager to provide a legislative contrast.
The North Korea legislation is bipartisan and will receive robust Democratic support, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Thursday.
But Democrats say they oppose the Iran sanctions bill, which is also guaranteed to earn a presidential veto. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee that drafted the bill, said he opposes it.
“I think we should have a bill that sanctions Iran that is done in a bipartisan way,” Engel told the Washington Examiner. “The Democrats were not asked to have any part in the drafting of the bill or the wording of the bill.”
Pressed for specific objections, Engel said the legislation is riddled with technical problems.
“One example is that certain companies are sanctioned, where companies who are worse, are not sanctioned,” he said. “There are all kinds of things like that.”
The United States is poised to lift sanctions against Iran as part of a nuclear deal reached with multiple countries in exchange for a reduction in its nuclear program. But Iran has violated United Nations Security Council resolution with missile testing, including a medium-range ballistic missile that could carry a nuclear weapon, and Republicans think it’s time to pile on the sanctions against Iran for that transgression.
According to McCarthy, the House legislation would “stop the administration from offering sanctions relief to individuals or banks unless we are certain they do not support terror, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Iran’s ballistic missile program, or its conventional weapons program.”
There is at least one bipartisan Iran sanctions bill out there, which would set up an expedited way for Congress to impose new sanctions on Iran for it’s missile program, human rights violation, or support for terrorism. But there’s no sign yet this bill will advance in the GOP-led House.
The House last passed truly bipartisan sanctions legislation against Iran in 2013, before the nuclear agreement.
