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US Senate decision to pass ISA bad policy: Analyst

Friday, 02 December 2016 5:03 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 02 December 2016 5:05 PM ]

The Senate side of the US Capitol is shown in this October 11, 2016 photo in Washington, DC. (Photo by AFP)

The US Senate has voted to extend the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA), sending the measure to the White House for President Barack Obama to sign into law. The ISA was first adopted in 1996 to punish investments in Iran over its nuclear program. Iran has said it is fully prepared to respond to this decision which violates the landmark nuclear agreement between Tehran and the P5+1 group of countries, dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but will act wisely and with prudence.

Roozbeh Aliabadi, managing partner at Global Growth Advisor, believes the Republican Party is seeking to “delegitimize” US President Barack Obama’s foreign policy by passing the ISA.

“President Obama is a lame duck president right now. He has been trying very hard, at least this has been perceived in Washington by GOP and the Republican establishment that he is trying to protect his foreign policy legacy, which is the JCPOA and the Iran nuclear deal, and what we are seeing is the Republican Congress and the Republican Senate are trying to push hard to make sure that they are delegitimizing Barack Obama’s foreign policy and they are doing a very good job,” the analyst told Press TV in an interview on Friday.

He also stated this measure is about internal politics in the United States not the JCPOA, asserting that it is a “bad policy”.

Aliabadi also pointed out that lawmakers in the US Congress are arguing that these are not new sanctions but an extension of old ones that should give credibility and leverage to the legislative branch in order to increase the pressure on Iran if necessary.

The analyst further said that President Obama will not veto the extension of the ISA and will let it become law.

However, he said, Obama will not be doing so to delegitimize Iran’s nuclear agreement, but to prevent “overreaction” by the GOP.

“So probably Barack Obama is trying to put out a lot of what I call political fires and... assure the Iranian side that this is not new sanctions, these are just extension of sanctions symbolically and he had no other way but to cope with it politically as a lame duck president,” the analyst added.

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