Government shutdown 'totally depletes' US ability to enforce Iran sanctions
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The government shutdown has “totally depleted” the administration's ability to enforce sanctions against Iran, a top State Department official told lawmakers on Thursday, but said the fundamental sanctions must remain until all concerns have been dealt with.
Wendy
Sherman, State's under secretary for political affairs, told a Senate
panel that the shutdown has all but closed the Treasury Department's
sanctions office. She said Congress's failure to fund the government has
also hampered the State Department and has “devastated” the
intelligence community, which identifies sanctions evaders.
“Our
ability to … enforce sanctions, to stop sanctions evaders, is being
hampered significantly by the shutdown,” Sherman told a Senate Foreign
Relations panel hearing on Iran's nuclear program. “Quite frankly, where
Iran is concerned, the sooner the shutdown is over, the better we will
be able to do the job you are asking us to do and that we want to do.”
Sherman said the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control has been “completely, virtually utterly depleted.”
“We
do not have our full intelligence committee,” Sherman said, “[and] the
State Department is putting restrictions on travel by State Department
employees and we use our sanctions team to travel the world to go after
sanctions evaders and folks who aren't following through so it will
impair our ability to do that.”
“We
will do our best to enforce sanctions, to stop sanctions evaders, but I
sincerely hope that the shutdown ends soon so that we are truly able to
do so in these negotiations proceed.”
Voice of Russia, The Hill
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