Kerry asks U.S. lawmakers to refrain from new Iran sanctions

November 14, 2013 - 09:21 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned Congress against imposing new sanctions against Iran. Kerry said fresh sanctions could destroy diplomatic efforts to rein in Tehran's nuclear program, Deutsche Welle reports.

Kerry asked U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday, Nov 13, to refrain from passing new sanctions or risk imperiling delicate nuclear talks.

"We put these sanctions in place in order to be able to put us in the strongest position possible to be able to negotiate," he told reporters ahead of a closed-door meeting with members of a Senate Banking Committee.

"We now are negotiating, and the risk is that if Congress were to unilaterally move to raise sanctions, it could break faith with those negotiations and actually stop them and break them apart," Kerry added.

The five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, known as the P5+1, are engaged in ongoing high-level talks with Iran aimed at reaching an interim deal to halt parts of Tehran's nuclear program - in exchange for the suspension of some sanctions. While Iran asserts its atomic program is for peaceful purposes only, the coalition fears it could be seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

The latest round of talks in Geneva last week failed to yield a deal, however, after Iran rejected a proposal presented by the US, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany.

The House of Representatives has already passed legislation that toughens sanctions on Iran. With the Senate committee also considering new sanctions legislation, Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden were tasked with making the case for diplomacy before talks resume on Nov 20.

"What we are asking everyone to do is calm down, look hard at what can be achieved and what the realities are," Kerry said.

"Let's give them a few weeks, see if it works," he said, adding that there was "unity" among the six powers negotiating with the Islamic republic.

"If this doesn't work, we reserve the right to dial back the sanctions." In that event Kerry added he would return to Capitol Hill "asking for increased sanctions. And we always reserve the military option."

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Iran's nuclear program

Iran's leaders have worked to pursue nuclear energy technology since the 1950s, spurred by the launch of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program. It made steady progress, with Western help, through the early 1970s. But concern over Iranian intentions followed by the upheaval of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 effectively ended outside assistance. Iran was known to be reviving its civilian nuclear programs during the 1990s, but revelations in 2002 and 2003 of clandestine research into fuel enrichment and conversion raised international concern that Iran's ambitions had metastasized beyond peaceful intent. Although Iran has consistently denied allegations it seeks to develop a bomb, the September 2009 revelation of a second uranium enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom -constructed under the radar of international inspectors - deepened suspicion surrounding Iran's nuclear ambitions.