US House Committee Passes Bill Banning Iran Military Drones
The US House Foreign Affairs Committee Friday passed a bipartisan bill that would ban the supply, sale or transfer of military drones to or from Iran under US law.
The US House Foreign Affairs Committee Friday passed a bipartisan bill that would ban the supply, sale or transfer of military drones to or from Iran under US law.
The bill was introduced by a group of Republicans and Democrats in late November. The lawmakers behind the proposed legislation (H.R. 6089), the Stop Iranian Drones Act (SIDA), say it clarifies that US sanctions on Iran’s conventional weapons program under CAATSA (The Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act) include the supply, sale or transfer to or from Iran of drones.
The draft legislation was presented by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks (D-NY), Michael McCaul (R-TX), Ted Deutch (D-FL), and Joe Wilson (R-SC) Tuesday.
Iran’s military drone program has expanded in recent years and UAV’s have been more frequently used in attacks in recent months both on land and at sea.
In an interview with the Associated Press on Friday, commander of CENTCOM Gen. Kenneth McKenzie expressed concern over the growing capabilities of Iranian missiles and drones.
“Iran’s UAV proliferation continues to threaten the U.S. and our allies throughout the Middle East. Whether the attack is launched by Iran, the Houthis, Iran-backed militia groups or any other Iran-sponsored entities, these attacks are intolerable,” Rep. McCaul said.
The US general in charge of protecting the Persian Gulf and the wider Middle East said that the range, lethality, capability as well as the quantity of Iranian missiles are increasing and “that concerns me, coupled with their land attack, cruise missiles over the last couple of years,” and with their growing drone program he said.
“You know, they starve their people so they can build these missiles,” the CENTCOM commander said.
Iran’s Islamic government touts its missile and other military programs as sign of its success in self-reliance, but the civilian economy has not grown in the past decade. High inflation, a battered currency and lack of investments have increased poverty.
Regarding Iran’s role in Iraq and the presence of around 2,500 US troops, McKenzie said that Tehran and Iraqi militias it backs are upset that they lost in the parliamentary elections in October, and he is anticipating more attacks during December.
"They're really frustrated over their inability to affect government formation in the way they want to do it,” he said and their attacks, including a drone strike at the prime minister’s residence is “a signpost of the desperation that they're under right now.”
Many Iraqis detest Iran’s indirect presence in their country and the political influence Tehran has projected, ensuring that loyal politicians maintain control in Iraq. But at the same time, inefficiencies and the mismanagement of successive governments are also blamed on Iran’s meddling. Large anti-government and anti-Iran protests erupted in October 2019 and continued for months, openly demanding Iran to remove itself from Iraqi politics.
The US general added that Iran’s ultimate aim is to evict American forces from Iraq, but those forces will stay, he reiterated, with a new, non-combat role.
Top Iranian officials have been often claiming that US forces are about to leave Iraq and that would be a second victory after their “escape” from Afghanistan.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a press release Tuesday highlighting the US’s “largest-ever forfeitures of fuel and weapons shipments from Iran.” The reason for the timing was unclear. It came the same day as the US Treasury Department designated 15 individuals – nine in Iran, five in Syria, and one in Uganda – for alleged human-rights abuses and as a prelude to a US ‘Summit for Democracy.’
The DOJ press release noted that $26.7 million in “net proceeds” of selling the Iranian oil would be directed in whole or in part to a fund for “US victims of state-sponsored terrorism.”
This followed the DOJ announcing in February the US seizure of 1 million barrels of Iranian oil in 2020. Later news reports said the US had impounded 2 million barrels from just the tanker MT Achilleas, seized in February 2021 off the United Arab Emirates, and sold it in Texas for £110 million, or around $55 a barrel. It was unclear whether the $26.7 million is net of this.
In July, the US brought a court action in a domestic court seeking approval for the previous seizure of four foreign-flagged tankers on the grounds that the sale of the oil would benefit Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, designated a foreign terrorist organization by the US.
The DOJ last year, when President Donald Trump was in office, had used the procedure of civil forfeiture to sell four Iranian gasoline cargoes bound for Venezuela, seized earlier in the year, for $40 million.
The weapons cited in Tuesday’s press release were taken from “two flagless vessels in the Arabian Sea” in November 2019 and February 2020, including anti-tank missiles and components for land attack and anti-ship cruise missiles. Forfeiture was granted on November 16 by a US court on the grounds that the government had “adequately alleged that the weapons belonged to the IRGC and that the IRGC constituted an entity engaged in planning or perpetrating a federal crime of terrorism against the United States.”
‘Pallets of currency’
In what will be seen as further sign of US toughening in Tehran, the National Defense Authorization Act, passed Tuesday by the House of Representatives, reportedly included several clauses on Iran.
With the agreed text not yet available digitally, Gabriel Naronha, who worked on Iran in the State Department under Trump, tweeted Tuesday that at least some of draft clauses covering Iran had been passed.
One barred the Defense Department from the “transfer of pallets of currency, currency, or other items of value to the Government of Iran, any subsidiary of such Government, or any agent or instrumentality of Iran.” This was apparently intended by drafters to preclude any US move, as was done under the Obama administration when the 2015 nuclear deal was agreed, to repatriate Iranian assets frozen in the US in exchange for the release of Americans detained by Iran.
Naronha tweeted “deep condolences” to John Kerry, Secretary of State at the time of the 2015 deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). In an interview on Iranian state television Sunday marking 100 days in office, Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi said Tehran was prepared to scale back its nuclear program to JCPOA limits on condition that the US lifted sanctions imposed since 2018 when Trump left the agreement.
Iran has adopted a tough negotiating posture in Vienna after Raisi’s election, demanding that all post-2018 sanctions be lifted at one and prior to Iran making concessions. US and its European allies have criticized the new demands saying that Tehran has reneded on agreement made during the talks from April to June.
