WASHINGTON -- The House on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved bipartisan bills to crack down on supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and renew a decades-old Iran sanctions law.
Swift passage underscored broad support on Capitol Hill for punishing financial backers of the Syrian government and maintaining economic pressure on Tehran. Both bills had the firm backing of Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the panel's top Democrat.
The Senate must act on the legislation before the bills can be sent to the president.
Lawmakers have accused the Assad government of war crimes as the number of people killed during the violence in Syria continues to mount. The war, now in its sixth year, has killed as many as half a million people, contributed to Europe's worst refugee crisis since World War II and given the Islamic State militant group room to grow into a global terror threat.
"What we have now is a grim lesson in human suffering," Royce said. "We can see the ethnic cleansing going on. Even the United Nations calls this 'crimes of historic proportions.' Enough's enough."
The Syria legislation targets key backers of Assad such as Russia and Iran, according to Royce, by requiring the president to sanction countries or companies that do business with or provide financing to the Syrian government or the Central Bank of Syria.
Anyone who provides aircraft to Syria's commercial airlines, does business with the transportation and telecom sectors controlled by the Syrian government, or supports the country's energy industry also would be subject to sanctions, according to the legislation.
Sanctions could be suspended if internationally recognized negotiations to resolve the war in Syria are making progress and the violence against civilians has ended, according the legislation.
The Iran Sanctions Extensions Act cleared the House by a 419-1 vote. The lone no vote came from Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.
The bill's backers say extending the law allows the U.S. to punish Tehran should the country fail to live up the terms of the nuclear deal reached last year. In exchange for Tehran rolling back its nuclear program, the U.S. and other world powers agreed to suspend wide-ranging oil, trade and financial sanctions that had choked the Iranian economy.
The act, first passed by Congress in 1996 and renewed several times since then, expires at the end of the year. The bill approved by the House extends the law by 10 years to 2026.
A Section on 11/16/2016