Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) and Rep. Eliot Engel (D., N.Y.) pushed their colleagues in the U.S. Congress to step up the pressure against Iran in a Wall Street Journal editorial Monday, writing the brutal regime stood at the threshold of nuclear capability and "taking immediate steps to increase the pain of sanctions is the only way to persuade the Iranian leadership to change course."
Newly elected president Hassan Rowhani is no reformer, they wrote, adding the foolishy optimistic "moderate" label bestowed to him by media outlets is a myth. His election was not a fair or free one, as the Iranian people were forced to choose between a select group of regime insiders who had been carefully vetted and hand-picked by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and the Internet was kept under tight control until Rowhani's victory:
For more than two decades, he served as the supreme leader's personal representative to Iran's national security council. The council oversees a range of illicit activities—from cracking down on student protestors at home to supporting terrorist groups, like Hezbollah, abroad. During a 2004 speech Mr. Rowhani boasted about how his rope-a-dope negotiating strategy with the West enabled Iran to stall while advancing its nuclear program.
As President Rowhani calls for "serious" talks with the West, Iran's centrifuges spin, its test missiles launch, its terrorist proxies plot, and its human-rights abuses escalate. The Pentagon reports that Iran could flight test an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. by 2015. Just last month, the nonpartisan Institute for Science and International Security, using data provided by United Nations inspectors, estimated that Iran would achieve nuclear critical capability—the technical know-how to produce sufficient weapon-grade uranium for a nuclear explosive without being detected—by the middle of 2014.
We believe the U.S. must exhaust all nonmilitary options to prevent Iran from achieving critical capability. Our most effective tool for avoiding a military strike is enacting harsher sanctions.
In 2011, Congress implemented sanctions targeting Iran's central bank and oil exports. A year later, the U.S. blacklisted Iran's shipping, shipbuilding and energy sectors. The result? Since December 2011, Iran's currency lost more than two-thirds of its value while the regime's oil revenues were cut in half. So sanctions are working. But loopholes remain, and the pressure is nowhere near maximum levels [...]
By strengthening sanctions, we are not calling for an end to diplomacy. But after many years of fruitless negotiations, it is clear that talks will only succeed if the regime feels pressure to change course—and not as a result of misplaced optimism over a new face for the same regime that has not wavered in its pursuit of nuclear weapons.