After months of delay and foot-dragging which only bought time for Iran to advance its nuclear program, the United Nations finally mustered the will to act and impose sanctions this week. While any additional sanctions are a step in the right direction, these sanctions are weak and are not likely to slow down Iran's nuclear arms programs.
The resolution, which passed 12-2, includes such elements as a conventional arms sales ban, a ban on certain nuclear and missile investments abroad and measures that could thwart Iranians' banking and shipping maneuvers and hinder the growing role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in proliferation activities. It is interesting to note that Turkey, a NATO ally, and Brazil, a major regional power, voted against the sanctions resolution. Lebanon, a beneficiary of U.S. aid, abstained, despite the "engagement" strategy of the Obama Administration.
"This cannot be the end of the sanctions effort," Rodney said. "Now that the UN has belatedly acted, it is imperative that Congress quickly pass sanctions legislation with real teeth."
Rodney is a cosponsor of the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act and other Iran sanctions bills now being finalized in a House-Senate "conference committee."
"We waited more than a year for a weak UN resolution," he said. "There is no doubt that we are in a worse position than we were 18 months ago when the President started his "diplomacy' and "engagement'. It is now time for Congress to approve the Iran sanctions bill without watering it down."
"Iran and the 'Freedom Recession': Facebook had no answer to the pro-regime vigilantes who ruled the streets. And the U.S. president, who might have helped, stood aside." Read how Johns Hopkins Professor Fouad Ajami characterizes the essense of the President's foreign policy in the Wall Street Journal.
Recommended Reading IV: Charles Krauthammer writing in today's Washington Post, "The myth of Iran's 'isolation'".