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Embassy Row: \u2018Hour is late\u2019
Washington Times
Warning the White House that the \u201chour is late,\u201d more than 200 members of Congress are urging President Obama to extend sanctions on Iran to cover two key companies that act as \u201cproxies\u201d for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the stormtroopers for Iran\u2019s theocratic regime.<\/p>\n
The lawmakers called for sanctions against the National Iranian Oil Co. and the National Iranian Tanker Co., which, they said, help Iran evade international sanctions against its oil industry.
They said the oil company \u201cprovides significant support\u201d for the Guard Corps, which has evolved from an elite military unit formed to protect the 1979 Iranian revolution into a multbillion-dollar business enterprise that helps fund Iran\u2019s nuclear program.
The tanker company, which owns a fleet of ships, employs \u201cdeceptive practices\u201d to try to hide the vessels by sailing under the flags of other countries, renaming the ships or transferring ownership to front companies, the lawmakers said.
\u201cNow is the time to take forceful steps to further intensify pressure on the Iranian regime. Mr. President, the hour is late,\u201d said the letter written by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Florida Republican and chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The letter followed congressional approval last week of the \u201cIran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act,\u201d which was sent to the White House for Mr. Obama\u2019s signature.
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, New York Democrat, said the bill would impose the \u201cstrongest set of sanctions ever enacted to isolate any country with which the United States was not in armed hostilities.\u201d
\u2018People are Watching\u2019
Members of Congress are calling on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to put more pressure on the Iraqi government to provide humane treatment for more than 3,500 disarmed Iranian dissidents being forced into a cramped camp that lacks proper sanitation and other facilities to accommodate such a large population.
Seventy-nine members of Congress last week wrote to Mrs. Clinton to complain about the \u201ccurrent dreadful living conditions in Camp Liberty\u201d for members of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq.
They reminded the State Department that the U.S. has a special responsibility for the former rebels after transferring them to the custody of the Iraqi government, which is drawing closer to Iran.
The State Department is also under a court order to provide justification for keeping the rebels on the U.S. terrorist list, nine years after the rebels surrendered their arms to U.S. forces after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
\u201cWhat a shame to use the word \u2018liberty\u2019 in what is essentially a prison,\u201d Rep. Ileana Ros Ros-Lehtinen, Florida Republican, said in a video message to Iranian-Americans last week at a bipartisan Capitol Hill rally for the Iranian dissidents.
Rep. John Lewis, a renowned civil rights leader in the 1960s, told the group that he got up at 4 a.m. and took a flight from Atlanta to Washington to attend the rally.
\u201cI wanted to be here and say to you [that] you must never give up,\u201d the Georgia Democrat said. \u201cDuring the days when I was a few pounds lighter, I got arrested on freedom rides, for marching. Got arrested 40 times. Jailed. Beaten. We didn\u2019t give in.\u201d
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Embassy Row: ‘Hour is late’Washington TimesWarning the White House that the “hour is late,” more than 200 members of Congress are urging President Obama to extend sanctions on Iran to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[175],"class_list":["post-12164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-iran-a-world","tag-updated"],"yoast_head":"\n