Oklahoma U.S. Rep. Steve Russell finds himself at odds with the White House over the Iranian Nuclear Arms deal that includes allowing Iran to dump huge amounts of oil into the world markets. President Obama is threatening to veto Russell’s Iran Terror Finance Transparency Act, a measure he started working on last August, getting the support of Democrats and Republicans.
A vote was scheduled Wednesday but it was delayed until Jan. 26 at the request of Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) The White House contends the bill is a move to stop the nuclear deal. Russell doesn’t see it that way and just wants to know who on the lists of terrorists and human rights abusers in Iran will be removed from the list as part of the agreement.
“The President has said repeatedly when he was doing the joint agreement that it would not affect those that were on the terror sanctions list or the human rights sanctions list,” said Russell during a Wednesday presentation on the House floor. “We went through the hundreds of names that are annexed to the joint agreement and we found about three score that we targeted specifically that are on those lists. So the President has said he will not lift sanctions on those individuals.”
His bill would require the President to certify which individuals would not remain on the sanctions lists and Rep. Russell said that is the essence of his bill.
“The simple fact is and I’ve read every single word of the joint agreement—there are hundreds of people on that annexed list and among them are more than 50 who ae on the lists,” said Russell. “This simply requires that bfore those are delisted the President certifies why. It doesn’t say they can never come off. Read section four. It’s pretty clear. It says that the President must certify just why that is the case. What this bill is not—a knee-jerk reaction.”
Listen to his House floor arguments.