US learning disorder – it fails to reconcile ineffectiveness of Cuban Sanctions 50 years later

This Is Not What Containment Looks Like

By Paul Mutter, November 9, 2011

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen”To strengthen Iran sanctions laws for the purpose of compelling Iran to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons and other threatening activities, and for other purposes,” begins HR1905, the so-called “Iran Threat Reduction Act” advanced by the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee this week. The resolution, put forward by the chairwoman of the committee, Florida Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, has 349 co-signers, more than enough to pass a House vote. It will increase sanctions on Iran and limit U.S. contact with Iranian officials, and pressure to enact it will be strengthened by the release of a November IAEA report asserting that Iran has been secretly developing nuclear weapons (and a delivery system for them) since 2003.

But Congress is not really interested in discussing the matter with Iran. One of the measures bans virtually all contact between U.S. and Iranian officials unless the president can certify to Congress – at least 15 days in advance – that not meeting “would pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the vital national security interests of the United States.” The bill targets not only Iran’s nuclear weapons program, but justifies sanctions for “other purposes” as well – amounting to what William O. Beeman calls an agenda of “making certain that the United States and Iran never achieve formal relations.”

Why bother with that, after all, when we want regime change, which would please the U.S. government, as well as two of the lobbying groups behind HR1905, AIPAC and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies? …more