Israel’s Lobby Imposes Crippling Sanctions on America — Again

The Israel lobby’s campaign against US and international corporations doing business with Iran is gearing up this week. The tip of the spear is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee sponsored expansion of the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996. If signed into law by president Obama, the legislation would institute onerous new monitoring to ensure exports never enter Iran, along with mandatory divestment from and penalties for any corporations discovered doing business in Iran. A new type of "office of special plans" at the Treasury Department that AIPAC and its think tank lobbied to create by executive order in 2004 is also on the warpath. Stuart Levey, the head of the office of "Terrorism and Financial Intelligence" is traveling to Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman "pointing out that they face dramatic risks by doing business with Iran." Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon finished a long set of meetings urging the US National Security Council to impose harsh sanctions on Iran.

The New York Times started the week with a list of corporations doing business in Iran and their US government procurement revenues. Most companies on this list long ago appeared on hit lists compiled by AIPAC for quiet divestment campaigns in state legislatures across the country. The New York Times ominously highlights in red any company that may be a "possible violator of the Iran Sanctions Act." National Public Radio’s Scott Simon, after reading it, was apoplectic. He fretted aloud on the air whether US companies and subsidiaries on the target list were "betraying their country’s national security interests." More