Obama's New tricks & Answers on Iran Fail to impress.

Obama's New tricks and Answers on Iran Fail to impress. (Bloomberg).

Top Obama administration officials have released new details about how they would lift most sanctions against Iran. Those are unnerving some experts, who doubt the administration’s claims about the sanctions will hold up.

In speeches last week to a conference at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Vice President Joe Biden revealed new details about the end of most sanctions against Iran if a nuclear deal is reached. The officials also claimed that most of the sanctions, including multilateral sanctions, could be snapped back into place if Iran cheated, and they argued that giving Iran tens of billions of dollars in cash won’t dramatically increase Iran’s spending on terrorism and other nefarious activities.

Lew spoke to a private meeting of Washington Institute members last Wednesday, after which Treasury posted his remarks.

He said that President Obama planned to use his own authority to suspend sanctions against Iran’s oil, banking and trade sectors after Iran complied with the initial parts of the deal and that Congress wouldn’t actually be asked to lift sanctions during his presidency.

“Only after many years of compliance would we ask Congress to vote to terminate sanctions, and only Congress can terminate legislative sanctions,” he said.

Lew said this suspension, rather than a legislative repeal of sanctions, would allow the administration to quickly reinstate U.S. sanctions if Iran is caught cheating. He also said that United Nations sanctions would be able to snap back easily and no single nation would be able to stop that.

“Lew is signaling that the administration is planning on delisting IRCG banks, energy companies and shipping companies, and perhaps the entire IRGC,” said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Hagar Chemali, a Treasury spokeswoman, told me Lew was not stating directly that the entire IRGC would be free from sanctions if a nuclear deal were signed.

“As we have stated numerous times, sanctions related to Iran’s support for terrorism, human rights and other destabilizing behavior will remain in force,” she said. “It would be a mistake to pre-judge any other potential future actions.”

Iran stands accused of violating the interim deal in a number of ways and also reportedly violated other parts of the existing sanctions regime, including by expanding an illicit nuclear procurement network that operates through two blacklisted firms.

Under the deal being discussed, Biden said, Iran would allow inspectors to visit “not only declared nuclear facilities, but undeclared sites where suspicious, clandestine work is suspected.” He said the the international community would have “the ability to challenge suspect locations.”

Experts following the talks say the Iranians have ruled out any access to military sites, which makes Biden’s pitch a little weak. Hmmm....As i said from day one the whole thing is a Nuclear garage sale. The pres does not have the authority to cancel Congress their actions. Read the full story here.