Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Republican Rep. Mike Pence: Obama's Sanctions Lack Teeth Needed to Stop Rising Dictatorship

(Newsmax).Rep. Mike Pence, R-Indiana, chairman of the House Republican Conference, is unimpressed by the administration’s actions on Iran.

“The failure to get a unanimous vote at the UN Security Council behind what was a weak set of economic sanctions represents a failure of leadership by this administration,” Pence told Newsmax on Wednesday. The vote also represents “a failure by the United Nations to live up to its historic charter of confronting rising threats by dictatorships.”

Far from deterring Iran, Pence said he believed that the failure of the Obama administration to convince Turkey, Brazil and Lebanon to vote for the resolution “is likely to embolden Iran in its nuclear ambitions.”

“With the action of the UN Security Council today, Iran can continue to enrich uranium and continue to develop weapons and weapon systems."

“We are not the world’s entire economy, but we are the world’s most powerful economy,We should use the strength of the American economy and our ties across the planet to bring real economic pressure on Iran while there is still time.”

Florida Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs committee, joined Pence in criticizing the Obama administration for stalling Congress from passing refined petroleum sanctions against Iran for the past year.

“We waited more than a year for this weak resolution?” she said in a statement issued Wednesday afternoon.

“Like its predecessors, this resolution has no means of effective enforcement. It implicitly discourages nations from taking further action. And it doesn’t even prohibit Russia from selling S-300 missiles to Iran,” she said.