The Biden administration is prepared to lift sanctions on the Iranian regime's primary vehicles for terrorism financing, according to the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, which is investigating Treasury Department efforts to waive these crippling measures.
Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.), whose committee has jurisdiction over the Treasury Department, is demanding the Biden administration turn over internal documents related to its impending decision to dismantle the toughest sanctions campaign in U.S. history.
Toomey suspects the administration will lift sanctions on Iran's central bank and its national oil company, both of which were sanctioned by the Trump administration for acting as the primary funders of Tehran's global terrorism operation. As negotiations with Iran in Vienna continue this week, Toomey and other leading Republicans are stepping up efforts to block the Biden administration from granting Iran billions of dollars in sanctions relief. GOP foreign policy leaders say they are seeing signs that President Joe Biden will waive sanctions that even the Obama administration pushed to keep in place.
"I am particularly troubled by reports that the administration is preparing to lift restrictions on significant economic entities, including the Central Bank of Iran and the National Iranian Oil Company," Toomey wrote in a June 10 letter to the Treasury Department in which he demands that the agency produce scores of documents related to future sanctions relief. "These firms were designated as terrorism-supporting entities following a 2017 law mandating terrorism sanctions on IRGC agents and affiliates."
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