Senate Republicans are working on a bill that would impose new sanctions on Iran for violating international laws against ballistic missile testing last fall, after what they said was a weak Obama administration response to the violations.
Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican from New Hampshire and a member of the Armed Services Committee, announced plans on Thursday to take the lead in writing the sanctions bill, though she provided no detail on how she planned to write it.
“The only purpose for testing ballistic missiles is to potentially, at one point, deliver a nuclear weapon,” she said. “We need to stand up to this regime — their illegal testing of ballistic missiles, they’re continued support for hostage taking … it seems Iran can get away with anything and we will not come down on them.”
Even though Ayotte welcomed the weekend return of four Americans the Iranians had held hostage, she said Iranian militias are allegedly responsible for the kidnapping of three U.S. citizens in Baghdad last week.
Several GOP senators, including John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Jim Risch and Dan Sullivan, immediately threw their support behind the new sanctions-writing effort and said they hoped key Democrats would support it in the coming weeks.
McCain accused the Obama administration of pandering to Iran to reach a nuclear deal, which he called an “illusion and mirage in the deserts of the Middle East.”
The Obama administration, he said, “won’t do a damn thing” to punish Tehran for its ballistic missile tests that violate United Nations resolutions barring them.
Over the weekend, the U.S. Treasury Department unveiled new, targeted sanctions on 11 people and companies involved in Iran’s ballistic missile program, one day after Obama lifted more than $50 billion in sanctions for complying with the nuclear agreement.
The action came after the administration prepared a press release announcing new sanctions on Iran for the ballistic missile testing, but reversed course and decided not to issue the sanctions at the time.
Republicans this week dismissed the administration’s new ballistic missile sanctions as too little, too late, and on Thursday seized on remarks from Kerry conceding that he expected some funds from Iran sanctions relief to end up in the hands of terrorists.
CNBC “Squawk Box” host Andrew Ross Sorkin earlier Thursday pressed Kerry on whether he believes any of the tens of billions of dollars in sanction relief the nuclear deal provides Iran would end up in the hands of terrorists.
“I think that some of it will end up in the hands of the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] or other entities, some of which are labeled terrorists,” Kerry said. “You know, to some degree, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that every component that could be prevented, but I can tell you this, right now, we are not seeing the early delivery of funds going to that kind of endeavor at this point in time. I’m sure at some point some of it will.”
Kerry went on to repeat a common refrain of the administration’s, that the Saudis and other gulf states spend far more on their defense systems than the Iranians do on their military activities.
“So, it’s so incredibly disproportionate that I believe that working with our Gulf state partners, which we are going to do and which we are upgrading, we have the ability to guarantee that they will be secure, that we will stand by them even as we look for this potential of a shift in behavior,” he said.
Republicans, including Graham, said Kerry’s comments are proof of what critics suspected all along.
“Secretary Kerry, it is certain that they will use this money to support terrorism,” Graham said. “You might as well have written the check to Assad yourself, you might has well have funded Hezbollah yourself.
