HOUSE VOTES
for more oversight on Iran nuclear deal, but bill put on hold by speaker.
WASHINGTON — The House voted Wednesday to approve the Iran Terror Finance Transparency Act, which seeks to give more congressional oversight to the nuclear deal struck with Tehran.
But Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., determined to keep the House on schedule, gaveled the 191-106 vote to a close — even though 137 lawmakers hadn’t voted.
Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., later vacated the vote — rendering it null and void — and scheduled another vote for Jan. 26.
The House bill would bar the removal of certain individuals and foreign financial institutions on a restricted
list kept by the Treasury Department until the president certifies to Congress that they weren’t involved in Iran’s ballistic-missile program or in terrorist activities.
The United States is set to begin lifting sanctions against Iran as Tehran fulfills its obligations under the July deal. Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday that Iran likely will be in compliance within days. The White House said the bill could cause “the collapse” of the agreement and that the president will reject the legislation if it ever reaches his desk.
The agreement, forged by the United States and Iran and signed by five other nations, commits Iran to cutting back over more than a decade on nuclear technologies that could be used for weapons-making. In exchange, Iran will have access to about $100 billion in previously frozen assets and fully return to the oil market.
Republicans have said sanctions relief will leave Iran flush with cash to fund terrorism.
For most Republicans, the episode with the U.S. Navy in Iranian waters is another example of Iran’s belligerence and why it can’t be a trusted partner. Since the agreement was reached, they say, Tehran has accelerated its missile program in violation of existing U.N. sanctions, and has continued to support terrorist groups and to hold American hostages. Iran also has remained an ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, whom lawmakers accuse of causing the deaths of more than 200,000 of his own people throughout Syria’s civil war.
“Iran has been on a bit of a tear,” Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., deadpanned on the House floor Wednesday. And all of this has happened before Iran “will cash in with $100 billion plus in sanctions relief,” added Royce, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Democrats who opposed the bill painted the legislation as a backdoor attempt to scuttle the agreement after Obama last year won enough support to prevent Congress from derailing it. But Iran’s actions have made Democrats uneasy, and they are urging the White House to hold Tehran accountable as promised when the agreement was being crafted.
Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, senior Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said he also is concerned about Iran’s recent actions, but he said the bill seemed to be aimed at embarrassing Obama by establishing requirements that would be impossible to meet. Engel opposed the nuclear deal.
“We should go back to the drawing board rather than ramming through a partisan measure,” Engel said.
The legislation targets more than 50 individuals and entities included in an attachment to the nuclear deal that also are on Treasury’s “Specially Designated Nationals” list, which freezes any assets they may have in the U.S. and generally prohibits anyone in the U.S. from doing business with them.
The White House would be prohibited from taking them off the list unless it assures Congress they have not “facilitated a significant transaction” for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, a foreign terrorist organization, or anyone sanctioned in connection with Iran’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic-missile programs, according to the House measure.