Don’t Mess Up U.S.-Iran Sanctions

Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- As the U.S. Congress prepares totighten the vise around Iran with new sanctions, Americanleaders need to ask what previous measures have accomplished andwhether additional ones would help or hurt efforts to preventIran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

An amendment to the “must-pass” defense bill beingconsidered by Congress would blacklist several industrialsectors in Iran and expand U.S. actions against human-rightsabuses there. With Iran still refusing to comply with UnitedNations requirements that it assure the world it isn’t pursuingnuclear arms, this legislation may seem justified. Yet, as theObama administration has warned, these additional penaltieswould undermine efforts to test the effectiveness of existingsanctions.