The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday introduced a new bill that would expand sanctions against Iran over its ballistic missile program.
“Today’s important bill requires a comprehensive investigation to identify and designate the companies, banks, and individuals – both inside and outside Iran – which supply the regime’s missile and conventional weapons programs, subjecting them to sanctions,” Chairman Ed Royce said in a press release.
H.R. 1698, the Iran Ballistic Missiles and International Sanctions Enforcement Act, targets ballistic missile-related goods, services and technologies.
The bill requires Mr. Trump’s administration to identify the persons and the “foreign and domestic supply chain in Iran that directly or indirectly significantly facilitates, supports, or otherwise aids” the ballistics program.
President Donald Trump is expected this week to “decertify” Iran’s compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 nuclear agreement brokered by the Obama administration and other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.
Washington maintains that Iran’s ballistics program, which is not covered by the JCPOA, violates a 2010 U.N. Security Council resolution that calls on Iran not to undertake ballistics activity.
Tehran disputes the allegation, saying that the missiles are not designed to carry nuclear warheads.
Trump administration officials have argued that Iran’s ballistics program violates the “spirit” of the nuclear agreement.