“We want to make sure the sanctions that we put in place work. We’re trying to time them and put as much pressure as we can to cause behavior change [within the Iranian regime]. At the same time, we don’t want to do things that are going to end up being ineffective or cause our coalition to break apart,” said Corker.
The U.S. currently has an array of sanctions targeting the Iranian oil, financial, shipping, petrochemical and auto sectors, which have proven increasingly effective in isolating Iran’s ability to do business around the world and causing a dramatic drop in the value of Iran’s currency – the “rial.”
Corker also suggested focusing additional sanctions on wealthy Iranians with influence over the regime, which could help avoid the Iranian regime exploiting public opinion against the U.S.
“I think that we need to focus on those more targeted sanctions towards those individuals who can most readily affect regime behavioral change…But I think we’re ending up sort of turning public opinion [in Iran] in a different way than we’d like, and yet not really affecting the actual behavior of the leaders that can actually change what’s happening.” said Corker.
For complete witness testimony and archived video footage of the hearing visit: http://www.banking.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=f537f393-87e6-4e37-b575-5636e4708f94.
###