How to Punish Iran

Hillary Clinton is really playing hardball with Iran. Faced with its outrageous conduct in killing its own citizens to cow them into silence, she has disinvited Iranian diplomats from the hot dog festival commemorating July Fourth. That'll show 'em.

If you feel that stronger action may be required, you might want to consider the Sherman-Kirk Amendment, now passed by a House appropriations subcommittee with bipartisan support. The amendment, co-sponsored by Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman of California and Republican Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois, it would require a cutoff of export-import bank financing for any firm that exports gasoline to Iran or helps it to develop new refining capacity.

Iran, despite its vast oil supplies, has to import almost half of its gasoline. Its dependence on imported gasoline is its biggest vulnerability. Orde Kittre, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, calls it Iran's "Achilles' heel." The amendment is largely aimed at Reliance Industries Limited of India, which has gotten $900 million in loan guarantees from the Export-Import Bank — of which $500 million is to help expand Reliance's Jamnagar refinery, which refines almost a third of Iran's gasoline imports.

Apart from the obvious question of why the United States taxpayer is helping to finance the refinement of Iran's gasoline, the Sherman-Kirk Amendment offers the timid Obama administration the perfect way to show the anger and outrage it claims to feel at the suppression of democratic dissent in Iran.

It might even be more effective than the denial of Fourth of July hot dogs.

This bipartisan bill strikes at the very core of Iran's economy and sends a potent signal of America's support for human rights and opposition to totalitarian autocracy.

President Obama has unilaterally repealed the emphasis on human rights that was President Jimmy Carter's major positive foreign policy accomplishment. He has replaced it with a value-neutral policy that appeases the forces of dictatorship and cowers in their wake.

The swift adoption of the Sherman-Kirk Amendment would give Obama a real weapon to discipline Iran and to pressure it to reach an accommodation with its own people. As speculators take their cue from Congress and bet on higher gasoline prices in Iran, the cost of gasoline would rise and catalyze further discontent with the regime. Iran subsidizes its gasoline prices, holding them to approximately 35 cents per gallon. With a falloff in refined capacity, the government would have to jump through hoops to avoid massive inflation in gasoline prices. Rationing would ensue.

Through economic, as opposed to military, pressure, Obama will be sending a signal to Iran of how seriously we take human rights in the United States and how little Iran can afford to isolate itself from the global community.

The Sherman-Kirk Amendment is no off-the-wall idea. With administration support, it could easily become law.

Now is Obama's chance to offer more than words to counter Iranian repression. We hope he will seize it.

To find out more about Dick Morris and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 DICK MORRIS AND EILEEN MCGANN

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