Obama's Iran policy, one big joke

From the Washington Post:

The Obama administration is pushing to carve out an exemption for China and other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council from legislation pending in the Senate and the House that would tighten sanctions on companies doing business in Iran, administration and congressional sources said.

The administration's plan in effect would label China as a country cooperating in the U.S.-led drive to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and appears to be part of a broader strategy to prod Beijing to vote for a new sanctions resolution...

Among other things, the legislation tightens existing U.S. sanctions on Iran by targeting sales of refined petroleum products to the country and the administration would want it to include an exemption for the six countries seeking to negotiate with Iran on its nuclear program. The six are the five permanent members of the Security Council -- the United States, France, Russia, China and Britain -- and Germany...

From The Cable:

Several congressional aides told The Cable Friday that their bosses were getting impatient with the ever-slipping deadline for U.N. action and that a large exemption that includes Russia and China would not fly on Capitol Hill.

"When we had the discussions in December about cooperating countries, it boiled down to the fact that the administration was demanding an exemption that was large enough to drive a truck through and that was not well received in the Congress," said one senior congressional aide close to the discussions.

Investors Business Daily notes:

If China does not sanction Iran..., then sanctions are meaningless. China is a leading trading partner of Iran's and depends on Iran for 11% of its oil.

And here's the biggest joke of 'em all.

From the New York Times:

The federal government has awarded more than $107 billion in contract payments, grants and other benefits over the past decade to foreign and multinational American companies while they were doing business in Iran...

That includes nearly $15 billion paid to companies that defied American sanctions law by making large investments that helped Iran develop its vast oil and gas reserves...

Many of those companies are enmeshed in the most vital elements of Iran’s economy. More than two-thirds of the government money went to companies doing business in Iran’s energy industry — a huge source of revenue for the Iranian government and a stronghold of the increasingly powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps...

One of the government’s most powerful tools, at least on paper, to influence the behavior of companies beyond the jurisdiction of the embargo is the Iran Sanctions Act, devised to punish foreign companies that invest more than $20 million in a given year to develop Iran’s oil and gas fields. But... the government has never enforced it, in part for fear of angering America’s allies...