The draft United Nations Security Council resolution offered last week by the five permanent members of that body proposes useful additional mandatory sanctions on Iran. Even more importantly, the resolution provides a basis for the European Union and other nations to impose much stronger national sanctions on Tehran in the energy, financial and other critical sectors.
We have always said that tough multilateral sanctions are the most effective means to persuade Iran to cease its efforts to develop a nuclear weapons capability – a demand repeated time and again by the international community -- and we applaud the efforts of President Obama and his national security team to unite the other permanent members of the Security Council behind this urgent goal.
Until the five permanent members of the Council reached agreement on the draft resolution, we were skeptical about the prospects for near-term action on Iran sanctions at the United Nations, and our intent had been to pass the final version of our Iran sanctions legislation, H.R. 2194, by the end of May.
However, with the progress in negotiations at the Security Council, we believe that our overriding goal of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability is best served by providing a limited amount of time for those efforts – and expected follow-on action by the EU at its mid-June summit – to reach a successful conclusion before we send our bill to the President.
We will use the coming weeks to ensure that our legislation is crafted to complement and augment those other actions as effectively as possible. We remain fully committed to passing a package of tough U.S. sanctions in the latter half of June, and after consultations with Senate Majority Leader Reid and House Majority Leader Hoyer, we expect that our legislation will be taken up and passed by both bodies in that time frame.
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