Two key House lawmakers want President Obama to use U.S. sanctions to block Russia’s sale of advanced anti-aircraft missiles to Iran.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., and the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, said in a letter sent Thursday that Obama should reconsider whether the United States can block the sale of the S-300 air defense system.
Though White House officials expressed “serious concern” about the sale, Obama has shrugged at the possibility of blocking it, saying April 17 that Russia was not barred by U.N. sanctions from selling the weapons to Tehran.
“While U.N. Security Council sanctions may not prohibit the transfer of this weapons system to Iran, U.S. law provides your administration with the authority to apply sanctions in response to such a transfer,” Royce and Engel wrote.
“Given the serious implications for the United States and our allies in the region, we respectfully request that you quickly determine whether Russia’s proposed transfer of S-300 surface-to-air missile systems would advance Iran’s efforts to acquire ‘destabilizing numbers and types of advanced conventional weapons’ and whether U.S. sanctions would be triggered by the planned Russian delivery,” they wrote.
“We are concerned that without such a determination, your recent comments could be interpreted as the United States acquiescing to this transfer.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced April 13 that he was lifting the ban imposed in 2010 on the sale, as a reward for Iran’s willingness to limit its nuclear program in a framework of a deal announced April 2.
Russia is one of the members of the P5+1 group negotiating a final deal with Iran with the United States, and Democratic lawmakers who support the talks see the sale as a betrayal, because it would make military action more difficult if Iran violates the agreement.
Republican lawmakers who oppose any nuclear deal with Iran point to the missile sale as proof that Russia cannot be trusted to help enforce any agreement.
