A senior House Democrat has declared that new US sanctions on Iran would bring the Regime to its knees and bring them back to the negotiating table.
Brad Sherman, a Representative from California, was speaking at a counterterrorism event organised by the Hudson Institute on Monday, when he said that “maximum sanctions” on Iran could bring the Regime “begging” to the US.
He said: “If we do enough, they will come begging to us to have negotiations on all the pending issues, including the inadequacies of the nuclear deal.”
Like many of the Iran hawks within the Donald Trump administration, Sherman voted against the nuclear deal, which lifts sanctions on Iran in exchange for restrictions on the country’s nuclear programme, in 2015 and believes that the deal does not do enough to contain Iranian aggression.
However, Sherman does not believe in withdrawing from the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, entirely. Instead he believes in strict enforcement and renegotiation of the deal in order to achieve international support for tougher actions on Iran.
He said: “We need the maximum sanctions, the maximum enforcement of nuclear restrictions, and the maximum international support. [Withdrawing] would cause Europe not to support our additional sanctions, and many in the world would even say Iran was then free to reopen its nuclear program without inspections or restrictions.”
Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who also spoke at the event, disagrees. The Arkansas politician, who has been a key player in Trump’s Iran policy, suggested that Europe would also renew its sanctions against Iran if the US withdrew from the deal.
He told the Washington Examiner: “Our allies in Europe and Asia at that point can decide whether they would like to do business with the largest economy in the world … or a terror-sponsoring country’s economy that’s approximately the size of the Maryland’s economy. I think that’s a pretty easy choice for foreign leaders.”
Sherman believes that to be an unnecessary risk as the evil exhibited by Iran justifies intense sanctions that are completely outside the realm of the nuclear deal, in order to punish Iran for the support of terrorism, their role in prolonging the Syrian Civil War by propping up the Bashar Assad Regime or their numerous human rights violations.
He said: “We can impose the maximum sanctions without even mentioning the Iran deal. And then we will have European support as we point to almost 500,000 dead Syrian civilians, a direct responsibility of Iran, as we point to the terrorism around the world, as we point to how they treat their own people and the execution of those in the LGBT community. There is no shortage of reason to impose sanctions on Iran.”
Source » ncr-iran