Romney Says he Would ‘Tighten’ Iran Sanctions
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foreign policy Iranian economy Iranian shipping Obama Iran oil production Romney nuclear Iran Romney sanctions Iran Stanley Fischer
Governor Romney at the debate.
At the U.S. presidential debate on foreign policy on Monday night, the effectiveness of Iranian sanctions became a central focus for the two candidates, President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney.
Obama said he has enacted strong sanctions on Iran. “Their oil production has plunged to the lowest level since they were fighting a war with Iraq 20 years ago,” he said. “So their economy is in shambles.”
Romney responded that he would “tighten” Iran sanctions beyond the level that Obama has by going after Iranian shipping and indicting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for inciting genocide.
Despite the candidates’ focus on sanctions, serious doubts remain over their ultimate effectiveness.
In an interview with CNBC prior to the debate, the Governor of the Bank of Israel Stanley Fischer expressed doubt over whether Iran sanctions would collapse its economy. Fischer said that while the Iranian economy would “continue to go down,” the regime likely would “find a way to continue to keep economic life going.”
Meanwhile, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service recently released a report that also cast doubt on sanctions.
“There is a consensus that U.S. and U.N. sanctions have not, to date, accomplished their core strategic objective of compelling Iran to verifiably limit its nuclear development to purely peaceful purposes,” the report said.
2:41 pm
President Obama’s debate win was truly impressive and now makes three out of four debate wins for Obama/Biden. People seem to finally be realizing that Mitt Romney and the GOP have based an enormous amount of their election strategy on lies, hated and deceit. From the 72 million Americans that will be left without any health insurance, whatsoever, by year 2020, under Romney’s plan (determined by two independent, non-partisan research studies available to the public), to women and minorities being drastically stripped of their equal rights because of his refusal to support initiatives like the Lily Ledbetter Act which enables women to be paid the same as men provided they do the same work (the first act passed by President Obama) or Hospital Visitation Rights which allows gay people the same visitation rights as straight people when a loved one is in hospital, Americans are seeing Mitt Romney for who he really is. From the West Coast to the East Coast and all of our our great country in between, we Americans are seeing from these debates that a Romney/Ryan plan will leave the middle class being burdened with much higher taxes while the wealthiest Americans pay less in tax because “it will help inspire job hiring” which evidence showed us in the Bush years, does not happen. Out of four debates neither Romney or Ryan could specify their “tax plan” despite being given numerous opportunities. That is not honest. That is not American. That is not integrity and that is certainly not Christian. Mitt Romney also has the highest disapproval rating, of all time, of any Presidential candidate, ever. Higher than Bush. We must understand this. The entire world hates the guy. We must be proud to be Americans. We must have a President who represents all of America and that we can be proud of. We are coming out of one of the most difficult economic times in our history in large part because of two wars we are finally ending. We are bringing our brothers and sisters home. But we cannot go backward. We must go forward. We are Americans. And we will prevail.
7:46 pm
We’re going forward off of a cliff. Romney Ryan 2012, our only hope.