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Appearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee to defend the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Kerry was asked about recent belligerent statements by Iranian leaders. “Less than two weeks ago Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led a rally that was frequently punctuated by chants of ‘Death to America!’ and ‘Death to Israel!’ observed Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) “Do you believe his comments accurately reflect Iranian government goals?” he asked Kerry.“I think they reflect an attitude and a rhetorical excess, but I see no evidence that they have a policy that is implementing that against us at this point in time.”
Asked whether he believes Iran is the world’s biggest sponsor of terror, Kerry replied that he does. Brooks then asked the secretary of state whether he believes that the Iranians “will use the conventional weapons made available by the Iran nuclear treaty to kill Americans or Israelis?” “Well, they may, they may,” Kerry said, adding that the U.S. has, ever since the embassy hostage crisis in 1979, “put sanctions in place specifically because of their support for terror, because of their abuse of human rights.” “Okay, I understand that,” Brooks said. “You answered my question when you said, ‘Yes, they may.’”
Under the JCPOA, Iran will get access to more than $100 billion in formerly frozen assets early on, and then will benefit over time as sanctions fall away and foreign companies line up to invest in the Iranian oil and gas industry. The deal also lifts the conventional arms and ballistic missile embargos, after five and eight years respectively. Through its proxies in Lebanon and Iraq, Iran has been blamed for the deaths of hundreds of American citizens and military personnel since the 1983 U.S. Embassy and Marine Barracks bombings in Beirut. In the second half of the Iraq war, many American fatalities were laid at the door of Iran and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia. According to Gen. Joseph Dunford, nominated to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the head of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC)–Qods Force, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, was alone responsible for the deaths of at least 500 U.S. soldiers and Marines in Iraq.
Hezbollah, the Iranian-directed and armed group in Lebanon that was implicated in the 1983 Beirut bombings and is Israel’s foremost enemy, already receives some $200 million from Iran each year, along with weapons and equipment. Also appearing before the House panel on Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said Iran would need a lot of the money it gets as a result of the JCPOA to ensure its oil and gas industries are “up and running properly.” “I wish I could say that zero, not a nickel, would go to malign purposes,” Lew said. “But even with the current sanctions regime they’re finding the money to put into malign purposes. The question is, do they do it with or without a nuclear weapon?”
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Iran sanctions expert Juan Zarate said in written testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the U.S., in making such a commitment, “appears to have bound itself to restrict the type of effective tools it will use to affect Iranian behavior” such as support for terrorism, propping up the Assad regime in Syria, and human rights abuses. Zarate, chairman and senior counselor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance, pointed to a provision in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which states that the U.S. and E.U., “consistent with their respective laws, will refrain from any policy specifically intended to directly and adversely affect the normalization of trade and economic relations with Iran …” “Though ‘non-nuclear’ sanctions were supposedly off the table, the spirit and letter of the agreement may actually neuter U.S. ability to leverage one of its most powerful tools,” Zarate told the panel.
The “normalization of economic relations with Iran” provision in the JCPOA, he said, “does great damage to that ability and to those powers.” “In essence,” Zarate said in his submitted testimony, “the U.S. and her negotiating partners appear to have agreed to immunize Iran from any effective future financial or economic pressure – precisely the type that brought the regime to the table.” Zarate, who until mid-2005 served as the first-ever assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes at the U.S. Treasury Department, said the JCPOA “shields Iran’s economy from any efforts to exclude it from the global commercial and financial order.” “This power is at the heart of U.S. strategies post 9/11 to use financial and economic power to exclude rogue actors and illicit activities from the global order,” he added. “This is a commitment we should not be making,” he said. “This is highly problematic if the U.S. hopes to maintain any ability to use financial and economic power and suasion to affect Iranian behavior in the future – either to ensure compliance with any agreement or confront other elements of Iranian behavior.”
The JCPOA’s provisions have been enshrined in a new U.N. Security Council resolution adopted on July 20 – ahead of Congress’ legally-mandated review of the deal. Zarate noted that the new resolution’s preamble reiterates the intent of the economic normalization provision with a clause that says, “Emphasizing that the JCPOA is conducive to promoting and facilitating the development of normal economic and trade contacts and cooperation with Iran, and having regard to States’ rights and obligations relating to international trade.”
He also raised concerns that the new UNSC resolution – which replaces a series of earlier ones imposing sanctions on Iran – allows other parties to review U.S. financial or other measures affecting the Iranian economy. In any future action to sanction Iranian behavior, the U.S. could be left looking isolated. “If the United States now commits to the normalization of economic and trade relations, it may also be committing to a rehabilitation of the Iranian regime in the eyes of the global financial and commercial community,” he said. “This proves highly problematic and undermines U.S. credibility and power internationally if this is done without concern for the underlying concerns that drove its isolation in the first place – proliferation, support for terrorism, and development of weaponry and programs of concern controlled by the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps].”
Other sanctions avenues
