Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich stand virtually alone in the House of Representatives in opposition to the latest round of sanctions the U.S. will impose on Iran in response to its unsubstantiated nuclear weapons program.
“When you put on sanctions on a country, it’s an act of war and that’s what this is all about,”said Paul. “I think this bill would be better named Obsession with Iran Act 2012,” he added.
Following political pressure by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, sanctions were approved and now head to the White House for Obama’s signature.
The sanctions target the Iranian oil industry and Chinese and Iraqi banks.
Obama said in a statement that existing sanctions will be expanded “by making sanctionable the purchase or acquisition of Iranian petrochemical products.”
Iran is currently under six rounds of sanctions put in place by the United Nations Security Council.
“The sanctions have devastated the daily life of ordinary Iranian people by bringing the price of goods to a skyrocketing height, making the students abroad unable to get financial assistance from their parents in Iran, rendering it impossible for the private companies to do international transactions and making it extremely difficult for Iranians to get visa for traveling to foreign countries.
The “smart sanctions” even include a ban on the importing of medicine and foodstuff from the other nations to Iran,” writes Kourosh Ziabari.
“This latest move by the U.S. Congress shows the extent to which Washington has become frustrated and now it is going to step up their pressure on Iranian civilians by preventing the country from importing agricultural products… Iran is a grain importer and the U.S. knows that and by creating obstacles in the way of grain exports to Iran, the U.S. is clearly committing crimes against humanity because it only affects ordinary Iranians who have got nothing to do with the country’s nuclear energy program,” Hamid Reza Emadi, an Iran-based political commentator, recently told Press TV.
The latest round of punitive measures came after presidential candidate Mitt Romney criticized the Obama administration for not moving against Iran in response to its nuclear program.
“The regime in Iran is five years closer to developing nuclear weapons capability,”Romney said during a visit to Israel earlier in the week. “Preventing that outcome must be our highest national security priority.”
Paul dismissed the as of yet conclusively proven accusation that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. “The IAEA and our CIA said they are not on the verge of a nuclear weapon. It is so similar to what we went through in the early part of this last decade, when we were beating the war drums to go to war against Iraq. And it was all a façade. There was no danger from Iraq,” he said.
Kurt Nimmo, Infowars.com