Iran sanctions on the table for congressional Republicans

Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon reports interesting developments on Capitol Hill involving the Islamic Republic.

Congressional Republicans will unveil this week the largest package of Iran sanctions in history, an unprecedented plan that aims to cripple Tehran’s global terrorism enterprise and bankrupt the cash-strapped regime, according to a copy of the legislative package exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The Republican Study Committee (RSC), the largest caucus of GOP lawmakers in Congress, will on Wednesday release a massive legislative proposal targeting malign regimes across the globe, including Russia, China, and Iran. The policy proposal includes more than 140 new initiatives intending to reassert Republican leadership on the foreign policy stage.

The Iran portion includes “the toughest sanctions that have ever been proposed by Congress on Iran,” according to Rep. Mike Johnson (R., La.), the RSC’s chairman. It would greatly expand the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign and force the removal of several contested policies that Republicans argue have kept the Iran nuclear accord on life support since President Donald Trump abandoned it in 2018.

The legislative proposal specifically tackles some of the thorniest issues in U.S. foreign policy: contested American taxpayer aid to Lebanon and other Middle Eastern nations controlled by Iran, sanctions waivers that have kept Tehran’s nuclear program alive, and the 2002 authorization for use of military force in Iraq, which Republicans view as severely outdated given the rise of numerous new terror factions.

Johnson and Rep. Joe Wilson (R., S.C.), head of the RSC’s foreign affairs and national security task force, told the Free Beacon that their proposal is more than a conservative wish list. Some Democrats could support many of the priorities. …

CarolinaJournal.com readers might recall a March speech in North Carolina from the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin. He analyzed the merits of a policy that would place maximum pressure on Iran.