Crippling international sanctions against Iran spearheaded by the United States are increasingly creating diplomatic headaches for the Obama administration, a panel of national-security experts and former lawmakers and government officials warned in a newreportThursday.The new report from the Iran Project, Weighing Benefits and Costs of International Sanctions Against Iran, comes as lawmakers are considering new sanctions on Iran's energy sector as part of House-Senate negotiations over defense legislation. It comes on the heels of a Septemberreportfrom the same group that weighed the pros and cons of military intervention to stop Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program, which concluded that a U.S. strike on Irans nuclear facilities could have unintended consequences that would lead to all-out war.
Differences with Russia, China and other countries including India, Turkey and South Korea have widened as more comprehensive sanctions take effect that aim to pressure Irans leaders by harming the civilian economy, the report concludes. Sanctions-related tensions among the United States and Russia and China have complicated U.S. efforts to achieve Security Council unity on international action in Libya and Syria.
The report's authors and signers say they are not advocating for any specific outcome, but they conclude that the current sanctions don't appear to be having the desired effect.
It seems doubtful to us that the current severe sanctions regime will significantly affect the decisionmaking of Irans leaders any more than past sanctions did barring some willingness on the part of sanctioning countries to combine continued pressure with positive signals and decisions on matters of great interest to Iran, they write.
The report was drafted by William Luers, Iris Bieri and Priscilla Lewis, the director, coordinator and editor, respectively, of the Iran Project. It is signed by 38 former members of Congress, senior diplomats, military and business leaders and regional experts.
This report seeks to understand how the 30-plus years of layered Iran sanctions with multiple and different objectives help or complicate the U.S. goal of reaching an agreement that would head off Iran having a nuclear weapon, retired U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering said Thursday before introducing the report at a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace event.
?By The Hill
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