DAR AL HARB - U.S.A.: CONGRESS MOVES TO ATTACK FOREIGN ENERGY COMPANIES THAT DO BUSINESS WITH IRAN

US Congress moves to attack foreign oil firms linked to Iran

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US legislation designed to punish foreign energy companies that do business with Iran was overwhelmingly adopted by a powerful committee of Congress Tuesday.

The foreign affairs panel of the House of Representatives passed the proposed law by 37 votes to one, with Democrats and Republicans alike accusing Iran of using energy investment to fund its nuclear drive and "terrorism."

"Investment in Iran's petroleum sector enables that country to pursue nuclear weapons, to arm insurgents fighting American troops, and to underwrite Hezbollah and Hamas," Democrat Gary Ackerman said.

"Foreign investment in Iran equals money for terrorism and attacks on Americans," he said.

The United States already has a slew of economic and banking sanctions on Iran dating from the 1979 Islamic revolution, embodied largely in the Iran Sanctions Act.

The United Nations has also toughened sanctions on Iran in recent months to punish its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, which the West suspects is aimed at building a nuclear bomb.

But the new bill would close a loophole that has allowed the administration of President George W. Bush to waive sanctions against foreign energy companies that continue to court lucrative deals in Iran.

In the absence of the US energy giants, European and Japanese companies have enjoyed the lion's share of the exploration and distribution of oil and natural gas from Iran.

The House committee's chairman, Tom Lantos, accused the Bush administration of "abusing its waiver authority and other flexibility in the law" by never sanctioning any foreign oil company that has invested in Iran.

"Those halcyon days for the oil industry are over," he said.

"The corporate barons running giant oil companies -- who have cravenly turned a blind eye to Iran's development of nuclear weapons -- have come to assume that the Iran Sanctions Act will never be implemented.

"This charade now comes to a long overdue end this morning."

Several members of the committee, invoking the war in Iraq, said they wanted to tighten sanctions to give diplomacy and not military power the best chance of success against Iran.

"We want sanctions, not bullets," Republican House member Chris Smith said.

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