Republicans and even some Democrats are coming down hard on President Obama’s policy toward Iran and Syria just three days after the Justice Department released information about a foiled Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S.
A Friday House hearing devoted to examining the threats posed by Iran and Syria quickly devolved into attacks on Obama’s record toward the two Middle Eastern dictatorships.
Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) lambasted the administration’s execution of Iran human rights protections passed into law last year, calling its record “truly pathetic and inadequate” and arguing that “a pack of Iranian boy scouts could do better by far.”
“I refuse to believe that the State Department, after exhaustively examining Iran’s massive machinery of repression, torture, rape, and murder can only identify 14 Iranian officials to be targeted for human rights sanctions,” he said. “A pack of Iranian boy-scouts could do better by far. This abject failure to execute the law is totally unacceptable…”
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expressed a dire need to force Iran to pay for its role in the plot, even as doubts have grown about the threat level as more details about the main suspect — a used car salesman nicknamed “Scarfarce” with a checkered business record — have emerged.
Obama has stressed the seriousness of the scheme hatched at the highest levels of the Quds force, an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtenin (FL), a moderate Republican who chairs the Foreign Affairs panel,
questioned why the administration has not taken more severe actions against Iran in the wake of the assassination plot. Obama has pledged to impose the “toughest sanctions” to date against Iran in response to the murder-for-hire plan.
In testimony to the Senate Banking Committee Thursday, David Cohen, the U.S. Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said the administration is considering hitting Iran’s central bank with more intense sanctions.
Obama himself Thursday said Iran is growing increasingly isolated in the Arab world and predicted that other Middle Eastern countries would punish the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regime.
But Ros-Lehtenin warned against relying on the United Nations or other countries to take action against Iran.
“Via the failed plot, it became clear for any who still had their doubts that the Iranian regime would use all available options to threaten U.S. security, our interests, and our allies,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “They brought the battle to our homeland, but our policy response is to essentially remain the same?
“Waiting for the UN to do what’s right as the threat from Iran and Syria grows is foolhardy and dangerous,” she continued, reminding the administration that Russia and China vetoed a resolution rebuking Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for his bloody assaults on the population.
“Instead of begging for help, we need a realistic policy that reflects the urgency and multi-faceted nature of the Iranian threat,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “We also need a policy that goes beyond merely sanctioning individuals in the Assad regime to one that provides a comprehensive strategy toward Syria.”
Rep. Howard Berman (CA), the most senior Democrat on the committee, came to Obama’s defense, arguing every previous administration has had similarly difficult times coming up with effective policies to curb Iran’s aggressions and prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.
“There has been no administration that has spent more time, and been more effective – than this administration [in trying to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon],” Berman said. “The fact that on any given day they don’t announce to the world what they’re doing … is not evidence that it’s business as usual, [that] they don’t care,” he said. “I do think it’s unfair to leave an impression that this administration is not completely focused on the goal that we all share.”
Later this month, the committee plans to take up three measures that include provisions Ros-Lehtinen has long called for requiring sanctions on Ahmadinejad, other top Iranian officials, and the Central Bank of Iran, as well as human rights sanctions on both regimes.
