Israel Matzav: US House passes Iran sanctions bill, lifts some sanctions

US House passes Iran sanctions bill, lifts some sanctions

The US House passed the Iranian sanctions bill on Wednesday by a vote of 412-12. Unfortunately, the Senate is not expected to act on it before year's end.

The bill's opponents, including Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul, claimed that the bill would mainly cause hardship among poor and middle class Iranians.

On Tuesday, the State Department announced that it would waive certain existing sanctions to allow ordinary Iranians to access web sites like Microsoft and Google.

Also on Tuesday, the State Department said it planned to waive provisions of existing sanctions against Iran to allow Iranians to download free, mass-market software used in e-mail, instant messaging and social networking.

The department said sanctions "are having an unintended chilling effect on the ability of companies such as Microsoft and Google to continue providing essential communications tools to ordinary Iranians."

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Democrat, welcomed the move: "Much of what we know about the regime's repression has come from firsthand accounts by Iranian citizens, distributed via Internet tools such as YouTube and Twitter," he said.

Whether this will make a difference remains to be seen. But so far, the green revolution has lasted much longer than most people expected.

Israel Matzav: US House passes Iran sanctions bill, lifts some sanctions