US imposes tough sanctions on Iran

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The US Congress Thursday approved tough new unilateral sanctions aimed at squeezing Iran's energy and banking sectors, which could also hurt companies from other countries doing business with Tehran, reports Internet.
The House of Representatives passed the bill 408-8 and sent it to President Barack Obama for signing into law. The Senate had approved it 99-0 earlier in the day.
Congress wants to pressurise Tehran into curbing its nuclear programme, which Washington suspects is aimed at making a bomb.
Democrat and Republican politicians have been pushing for months to tighten US sanctions on Iran.
At the request of the Obama administration they held off until the United Nations security council and the European Union agreed on multilateral sanctions. But the politicians then declared that tougher measures were needed.
"The UN sanctions, though a good first step, are quite tepid. And they are tepid because there are other members of the Security Council who want to keep doing that business with Iran … The United States … has to pass these unilateral sanctions," the Democratic senator Barbara Mikulski said.
The bill penalises companies supplying Iran with petrol as well as international banking institutions involved with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard, its nuclear programme or what Washington calls its support for terrorist activity.
Foreign banks doing business with key Iranian banks or the Revolutionary Guards would be "shut out of the US financial system", said the bill's author, foreign affairs committee chairman Howard Berman, who is a Democrat.
Global suppliers of petrol to Iran could also face bans on access to the US banking system, property transactions and foreign exchange in the US. Iran depends on petrol imports because it has insufficient refining capacity.
"Because of this legislation, we will be posing a choice to companies around the world. Do you want to do business with Iran, or do you want to do business with the United States?" Republican senator John McCain said during a Senate debate.
US companies are already prohibited from doing business with Iran. Foreign companies with big investments in Iran's energy sector can be sanctioned under current US law. But many US politicians say this has not been enforced.