Don’t Mess Up U.S.-Iran Sanctions

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

An amendment to the “must-pass” defense bill being considered by Congress would blacklist several industrial sectors in Iran and expand U.S. actions against human-rights abuses there. With Iran still refusing to comply with United Nations requirements that it assure the world it isn’t pursuing nuclear arms, this legislation may seem justified. Yet, as the Obama administration has warned, these additional penalties would undermine efforts to test the effectiveness of existing sanctions.