China and major international financial institutions have been increasingly willing to cut off Iran over its suspect nuclear program, top US officials assured skeptical lawmakers on Tuesday.
“China is increasingly aware of its own stake in effective international action against Iran and its nuclear ambitions,” the No. 3 US diplomat, William Burns, told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
However, Burns, who is US state undersecretary for political affairs, conceded he was “not sure they [the Chinese] share the same sense of urgency that we and others do and we’re just going to have to keep pressing hard.”
MOMENTUM
Burns and the top US Department of Treasury official in charge of sanctions against terrorist groups or blacklisted regimes, Stuart Levey, described growing momentum behind sanctions and other efforts to isolate Iran.
“Virtually all major financial institutions have either completely cut off or dramatically reduced their ties with Iran,” said Levey, US treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
Levey said firms in the insurance, consulting, energy and manufacturing sectors were making similar decisions, so that “voluntary actions of the private sector amplify the effectiveness of government-imposed measures.”
The two officials testified as US Congress moved towards approving, as early as this week, a new round of tough US sanctions against Iran in a bid to drive the Islamic republic to freeze uranium enrichment.
TARGET
The bill would target non-US firms that sell goods, services or know-how to Iran that help Tehran develop its energy sector, including insurance, financing and shipping companies.
It would also enable US states and local governments to divest from foreign firms engaged in Iran’s energy sector and would tighten the existing US trade embargo on Iranian goods by curbing the number of exempted products.
Tehran denies Western charges that it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, but has refused to suspend sensitive uranium enrichment work, which can be a key step towards developing an atomic arsenal.
The officials cautioned lawmakers against seeing the centerpiece of the new sanctions legislation — an effort to choke off Iran’s imports of refined petroleum products — as a cure-all, saying Tehran had braced for the blow.
Oil-rich Iran’s lack of domestic refining capability leaves it heavily dependent on imports to meet domestic demand for products like gasoline and jet fuel.
“This is a vulnerability and we think it’s one that could be exploited,” Levey said. “It’s not a silver bullet.”
Burns said Iran had decreased its dependence on imports to 25 percent of domestic consumption, instead of 40 percent a few years ago.
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