Senate set to vote on renewing Iran sanctions

The Senate will vote in about two hours on legislation that would renew a decades-old law that allows the United States to slap companies with economic sanctions for doing business with Iran.

Backers of the 10-year extension of the Iran Sanctions Act say extending the law allows the US to punish Tehran should the country fail to live up to the terms of the landmark nuclear deal.

If the Senate approves the House-passed bill, it will be sent to President Barack Obama, and he is expected to sign it into law. The House last month voted overwhelmingly, 419-1, to approve the extension. The act, first passed by Congress in 1996 and renewed several times since then, expires at the end of the year.

Last week, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said passage of the bill would be met with an Iranian response.

“If these sanctions are extended, it will surely constitute a violation of the [nuclear deal] and they [the US] should know that the Islamic Republic will definitely react to it,” he said without elaborating.

A senior Obama administration official says the sanctions renewal bill heading toward passage doesn’t violate the terms of the nuclear deal, which clears the way for Obama to sign it should the Senate pass it.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says preserving the sanctions is critical to blunt Iran’s “persistent efforts to expand its sphere of influence” throughout the Middle East.

Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has said renewing the law is necessary if the US wants to retain “a credible deterrent” of snapping sanctions back into place should Iran cheat on its obligations under the nuclear deal.

— with AP