U.S. Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, today delivered an opening statement during a hearing held by the Foreign Affairs Committee entitled “Iran and Syria: Next Steps—Part II.” The following are his remarks as prepared for delivery:

 

“The single question I have for the witnesses today is what’s left? Because unless you have means to apply more pressure to Iran diplomatically, politically and economically, we’re near the point where other options will have to be considered. For a variety of reasons, I think we’d all like to avoid those options if we can.

 

Thanks to the good work done by the previous Congress and with the support of the Obama Administration, we have massively increased the pressure applied by American economic and, particularly, financial sanctions. Picking up where President Bush left off, President Obama and Secretary Clinton did tremendous work to build a new consensus now enshrined in a UN Security Council resolution to isolate Iran diplomatically and restrict many of its avenues of trade. But these efforts are not enough.

 

The pressure on Iran has gone up, but this new heightened pressure is nowhere near the point of forcing the ayatollahs to deal away their nuclear capabilities. What kind of pressure would suffice? It’s hard to predict, but here’s what I’d like to see:

 

The Iranian Central Bank and the entire Iranian banking sector need lose whatever capacity they retain to facilitate Iran’s international commerce and trade. These institutions sustain Iran’s criminal regime, underwrite terror and facilitate Iran’s illicit WMD programs.

 

Let’s be clear, sanctions have to hurt. If they don’t hurt, they’re not effective. The goal is not for us to pat ourselves on the back and issue press releases in here; it’s to inflict crippling economic pain over there. Iran’s banking sector needs become the financial equivalent of Chernobyl—radioactive, dangerous and most of all, empty.

 

Other countries may object to this approach. Our response to them should be simple and frank. Either assist in cranking up the pressure on Iran by economic or financial means, or accept that the United States and other like-minded states will be compelled to deal with Iran’s unresolved nuclear issues by other means. It’s been ten years since the Bush Administration revealed Iran’s secret enrichment capabilities and the threat has only grown since then. Iran’s effort to acquire the means to produce nuclear arms must be stopped.

 

President Obama told the nation the he would use ‘all the means at my disposal’ to prevent Iran from crossing the nuclear arms threshold. I would say that there are still means as yet unused; they need to be used now.

 

Finally, I’d also like to note my deep dismay about the Administration’s truly pathetic and inadequate execution of the Iran human rights protections provisions passed into law last year. I refuse to believe that the State Department, after exhaustively examining Iran’s massive machinery of repression, torture, rape, and murder can only identify 14 Iranian officials to be targeted for human rights sanctions. A pack of Iranian boy-scouts could do better by far. This abject failure to execute the law is totally unacceptable and I’d ask you, Undersecretary Sherman, to carry this letter—which, unlike the State Department, actually names a host of culpable Iranian officials—to Secretary Clinton.”

 

Witnesses for the hearing included Wendy R. Sherman, the Under Secretary for Political Affairs at the State Department and  David S. Cohen, the Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at the Department of the Treasury.