US Congress following Israeli anti-Iran agenda: Pundit

The US House of Representatives has voted overwhelmingly to impose new sanctions against Iran. The lower chamber of Congress approved the bill on Tuesday. The move came days after the Donald Trump administration certified, for the second time, to Congress that Iran was in compliance of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers.

Press TV has interviewed Scott Rickard, a political analyst and former American intelligence linguist from Tampa, Florida, and Jim Walsh, a research associate with MIT Security Studies Program at Massachusetts Institute from Boston, for their thoughts about the imposition of new sanctions against Iran.

Rickard lashed out at US lawmakers, saying the financial backers of the congressmen are forcing them to approve anti-Iran bills.

“These sanctions have the fingerprint of AIPAC and well-placed lobbyists who are absolutely trying to sell arms and trying to push an agenda that has been a criminal agenda by the pro-Israel lobby and the Israeli government for the foreign policy in the region,” the commentator said on Wednesday night.

The American representatives who voted for the new sanctions did not back the Iran deal, because they are pushed by those who “strategically placed them in Congress and in the Senate” to do so, he noted.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been successful in pushing the anti-Iran agenda in Congress, Rickard explained.

“This is a tremendous success for AIPAC. It is pushing the Israeli agenda and it is pushing the individuals [and that is] a prelude to war when you read these sanctions.”

He also argued that the Israeli intelligence agencies are pushing the US to impose sanctions on Iran and set the stage for war.

The Iranian authorities have time and again protested that the United States is not abiding by its obligations under the nuclear deal, dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council - the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia - plus Germany signed the JCPOA on July 14, 2015 and started implementing it on January 16, 2016. Under the agreement, limits were put on Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for the removal of all nuclear-related bans against the Islamic Republic.

Meanwhile, Walsh, the other contributor on the show, said that “the anti-Iranian sentiment in Congress is still there and so this is a way for those who opposed the Iran deal to try to make trouble and to keep their political coalition alive.”

He further said that President Trump has been warned about the potential consequences of imposing new sanctions on Iran.

“Mr. Trump is hearing from Secretary of Defense [James] Mattis, from Secretary of State [Rex] Tillerson and from some members of Congress, ‘Don’t do this! Don’t shoot yourself in the foot! Don’t break it (nuclear deal) when it is working!”

Walsh went on to say that the United States is relabeling sanctions in order to dodge its commitments under the JCPOA.

“The sanctions fall technically outside the JCPOA. Under the agreement, the US is banned from imposing nuclear sanctions or to do sort of a simple swap where it's ‘disguising’ what were previously nuclear sanctions and simply relabeling them as a way to show bad faith, that would be also a violation of the agreement,” he said.

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