House Weighs Iran Measure Amid Doubts on Timing

NYTimes.com -- Legislation that would impose the toughest sanctions to date on Iran over its disputed nuclear program has been scheduled for a vote in the House on Wednesday, four days before the inauguration of that country’s newly elected president, a moderate cleric who has made improved relations with the United States an important goal.

The legislation, if enacted into law and fully enforced, could basically eradicate what is left of Iran’s diminished oil exports by coercing its remaining customers to find other suppliers. Proponents of the legislation say that with 376 sponsors, it is expected to pass the House easily. It would then move to the Senate for consideration in September.

But critics say the timing of the House vote has raised sharp questions about the kind of message it would send to Iran’s president-elect, Hassan Rouhani, before he takes office on Sunday. It has also laid bare a divide over Iran policy between Congress and the Obama administration, which has adopted a somewhat less confrontational approach.

Early this month, just weeks after Mr. Rouhani’s victory, the administration received an overture for direct talks with Iran’s leaders, and last week, in what was seen as a modest conciliatory gesture, it moved to ease a sanctions provision concerning sales of medical devices to Iran.

“Most people are saying this vote is taking place at the wrong time,” said Dariush Zahedi, an Iran sanctions expert who is now a political science lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. “They should wait and give Rouhani an opportunity to make good on his agenda.”

Megan Whittemore, the press secretary for Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, who is responsible for scheduling votes, said in an e-mail that she expected the debate on the bipartisan legislation to begin on Wednesday, with a vote most likely on Thursday. Others said the vote could be delayed until after the August recess.

Many of the bill’s sponsors, who did not anticipate Mr. Rouhani’s surprise victory in Iran’s election on June 14, were among the 131 lawmakers who signed a letter to President Obama on July 19 urging him to avoid “actions that delegitimize the newly elected president.”

Some signed a letter circulating among House members on Tuesday asking the House leadership to postpone the vote, at least until after Mr. Rouhani has an opportunity to restart talks on Iran’s uranium enrichment program, suspended before the election. Iran contends the enrichment is for peaceful purposes, but much of the world suspects it is meant to achieve the ability to make atomic weapons.

“The question is, why are proponents so adamant on having the vote now?” said Trita Parsi, the president and founder of the National Iranian American Council, a Washington-based group that opposes sanctions. “It certainly raises the suspicions they want to explode what opportunity may exist for negotiations.”

Supporters of the legislation argued that the vote’s timing would send exactly the type of message that, in their view, is the only one taken seriously by Iranian leaders: a threat that would force them to make a choice between self-preservation and economic catastrophe.

“We’re not negotiating with folks who trained at the Harvard Negotiation Project,” said Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington group that supports stronger sanctions. The legislation’s sponsors, he said, understand that Iran “has a negotiation strategy based on brinkmanship.”

Representative Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota, who opposes a vote now, was among those circulating the letter to colleagues urging a delay. The Iranians, he said, will interpret the vote as a signal of hostility. “I’m worried we could strengthen the hand of the hard-liners who don’t want to talk,” he said.