US House panel backs stringent new Iran sanctions

Iran could face tightened sanctions within months after a US congressional panel adopted a measure targeting the nation’s auto and mining industries as well as its foreign currency reserves.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday unanimously passed the Nuclear Iran Prevention Act, which would extend existing sanctions to the auto and mining sectors and allow the US president to subject other Iranian industries, such as engineering, to similar restrictions.

Thursday’s US sanctions focus on Iran’s finance and energy sectors, notably its oil exports. Six countries and territories - China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey - still import Iranian oil, but they have reduced their imports since 2012, with Washington granting them ‘exceptions.’ 

The new law, should it pass the House and Senate and get signed by President Barack Obama, would require further reduction of one million barrels per day over the next year as a condition of the exemption, amounting to a virtual embargo on Iran’s crude exports.

‘Now is the time to snap Tehran’s Achilles’ heel,’ the committee’s chairman, Republican Ed Royce, said after the vote.

‘Simply put, without oil revenue there is no cash for atomic weapons or Hezbollah.’ 

The measure would also close a loophole in sanctions which the European Union imposed on Iran’s foreign currency reserves by punishing any foreign institution that serves as an intermediary in facilitating currency conversions.