WASHINGTON -- The White House said Friday that the United States would implement tough new sanctions aimed at squeezing Iran's oil exports after President Barack Obama determined there is enough crude on world markets to take the step without harming U.S. allies.
Obama's move allows the U.S. to go forward with sanctions on foreign banks that continue to purchase oil from Iran. The sanctions aim to further isolate Iran's central bank, which processes nearly all of the Islamic Republic's oil purchases, from the global economy.
U.S. officials hope ratcheting up economic pressure will both push Iran to abandon its disputed nuclear program and convince Israel to give sanctions time to take hold before pursuing a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. The U.S. and allies believe that Iran is pursuing a nuclear bomb; Iran denies that.
Under a sweeping defense bill Obama signed at the end of December, he had until Friday to determine if there was enough oil supply on the world market to allow countries to cut their oil purchases from Iran.The decision was announced in a statement Friday.
The president said he based his determination on global economic conditions, the level of spare oil capacity and increased production by some countries, among other factors. He said he would keep monitoring the global market closely to ensure it can handle a reduction of oil purchases from Iran.
The law requires the president to determine every six months whether petroleum prices are low enough and production ample enough to apply the sanctions, The New York Times said. It also allows the president to waive sanctions if they threaten national security or if gas prices increase.
The national average price of gasoline rose about half a cent to $3.93 per gallon on Friday, only about a nickel less than last year's high of $3.98 a gallon, reached in May. Analysts think pump prices will top $4 a gallon nationally within the next couple of weeks, perhaps sooner. Then they could start to fall. Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service has said the average pump price could climb as high as $4.25 per gallon next month, which would top the all-time record of $4.11 per gallon set in 2008. He expects the national average to hit about $4.05 per gallon by mid-April. Whether it goes any higher, or retreats, after that is unclear, he said.
U.S. officials have sought assurances that pushing countries to stop buying from Iran would not cause a further spike in prices.
That's particularly important for Obama in an election year that has seen an increasing focus on gas prices.
The congressionally mandated sanctions target foreign financial institutions that do business with Iran's central bank — barring them from operating in the U.S. to buy or sell Iranian oil. The penalties are to take effect at the end of June, around the same time Europe's embargo on Iranian oil kicks in.
Countries can still avoid the sanctions if they take steps to significantly reduce their imports before then.
Many of the countries that buy oil from Iran are U.S. allies, including several European Union nations, Japan, South Korea and India. In order to provide flexibility to countries friendly to the U.S., the sanctions bill allows the U.S. to grant waivers to nations that significantly reduce their purchases of Iranian oil.
Even before Friday's decision, the State Department announced that it would grant waivers to 10 European Union countries and Japan because of steps they have already taken to cut back on Iranian oil. An E.U. oil embargo, approved in January, is set to take effect in July.
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., who co-authored the sanctions legislation with Republican Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, said he welcomed Obama's support in targeting Iran's Central Bank. Menendez's office says he was also notified of the decision earlier Friday
"Today, we put on notice all nations that continue to import petroleum or petroleum products from Iran that they have three months to significantly reduce those purchases or risk the imposition of severe sanctions on their financial institutions," Menendez said in a statement.
Wannabe cops are amongst the most dangerous of our citizens: hypervigilant yentas who could never get past the psych screenings that still manage to fail in filtering out some of the damaged folks that carry guns. This is an ugly murder. Uglier because it is clearly the result of hatred and fear gone wild...and condoned by the pimps of fear on the extreme right. That anyone would try to justify this by extrapolating their own fears onto that cretinous blob, Zimmerman, says much more about whom THEY ARE, than who Trayvon was, or Zimmerman is. Hate kills, people. It's a cancer that eats your soul. We need to let the sunlight of truth burn off the fog of KKK rationalizing that's attempting to distract from the facts: an unarmed child was stalked and murdered like an animal by someone unfit to call himself a man. That this "man" was given a pass by the local cops is a shame and embarrassment for every thinking, feeling citizen. We need to take our outrage and turn it into a teaching moment. Leave our kids alone: they come in every color and size. They are our only hope for a tomorrow without Zimmermans.
As a wanna be cop he was obsessed looking for suspects to add up his tally of doing a job and impressing the Sanford Police. Experts and politicians who wrote this absurd stand your ground hog wash, contend that it does not apply to Zimmerman and his self defense. The Sanford police from the Chief down with prior history racial of indifference are negligent if not covering this up a murder. The detective who interviewed Zimmerman has prior history racial prejudice in other cases, that were not pursued. The investigation by the FBI is going to open up a whole can or worms that Sanford FL would wish that it never heard of Trayvon Martin.
His Mother's grace is for the loss of her son is comparable to any mother's and father's endearing. The only yahoo's like Newt can call President Obama 's sentiment a disgrace because , his kind are pure simple bigots and racists.
For more on this subject go to today's Paul Krugman op-ed, Lobbyists, Guns and Money.
* An American Obsession
Published: February 2, 2006
Melvyn Polatchek
Why are we hearing nothing of the forensic evidence in this case? Are the Sanford police even smart enough to carry on a professional investigation? If they have just taken the word of Zimmerman and not fully scoped out the crime scene by now doing so would be a rather futile exercise. Which is why higher bodies of law inforcement such as the FBI should have gotten involved weeks ago. What's more, I understand the FEDS are are merely pursuing a civil rights violation, meaning they have NO INTEREST in the forensics.
This situation has been genuinely mucked up from day one! It's doubtful justice will ever be served here.
The War on Drugs is a race war by proxy. This is happening in spite of all the non-racist people who blindly support this policy with their Utopian good intentions.
You can see that in my town of Pasadena, where blacks are arrested for marijuana at twelve times the rate of whites, despite marijuana use rates being about equal.
That represents a systematic pattern across America and no amount of "dialogue over racial profiling" over the last 20 years has done a single thing to change it.
Zimmerman chased Martin down with a loaded gun because Zimmerman thought the young man was "on drugs."
Zimmerman thought he had a right to chase Martin down with a loaded gun because that is what our drug police do every single day -- they chase down young black men suspected of being "on drugs" while carrying loaded guns.
Nobody wants to mention drug policy here, probably because of the stigma attached to the topic, and the desire to separate Martin from any taint from the other young black men who get chased down by men with loaded guns because they really are carrying drugs.
But as long as our drug policy involves police officers chasing down young black men while carrying loaded guns, I don't see how life is going to change for the young black men in this country.
Even the ones who don't do drugs are going to fit that racial profile and end up in danger.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/22/george-zimmerman-s-hist...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/23/did-trayvon-shooter-abu...
This begs the question of what he was doing at the time of the encounter. Even though you claim he was a peaceful kid,l there might have been motivation for him to fight and try to escape if he expected punishment.
But this is conjecture, like your reasoning and your attempts to gin up sympathy for the plight of a black kid.
If Trayvon had killed Zimmerman would we be reading your op-ed about how much his grieving mother loved him? Only you know if you would have written such an op-ed.
Of one thing I am being as guilty as you, and that is being involved in trying Zimmerman in the court of public opinion without having the facts of the matter.
chuckles
-Tray was not armed.
-There were no indications that he had committed a crime.
-There were no reports to the police of vandalism, break-ins or anything else from that neighborhood, that night.
-Neanderthal Man, Cromagnon Man, Zimmer Man or what ever else you want to call him, pursued Tray despite the police telling him not to.
-Zimmer Man was armed with a modern high power, easy to use, weapon.
-To my knowledge, Tray had no history of violence.
Zimmer Man needs to be stuffed, laminated and put into the Museum of Legislative Mistakes. Which hopefully, Mr. Blow will conjure up enough support to start.
So how could Mr. Martin possibly be the aggressor here? Even if he did attack Mr. Zimmerman, doing so was simply unarmed self-protection against his lethally armed stalker.
People nation-wide are shuddering at the travesty of this case. In it we find echoes of the xenophobia and macho posturing that led to the death of Yoshihiro Hattori, an innocent Japanese student murdered in Louisiana in 1992. Rodney Peairs, the murderer in that case, also hid behind a specious self-defense argument, and also got away scot-free. When do we start to hold gun-waving paranoiacs personally responsible for their actions? If you kill somebody who has actually entered your home, then you can argue self-defense. But a beefy man stalking and killing a scrawny neighborhood boy, out in the street? What is happening to America? God save us from ourselves.
Zimmerman called "911" many times in the past. Local law enforcement decided to treat him as a harmless "wannabe cop" who didn't need to be controlled and let him continue on.....unofficially patrolling.....and never bothered to ascertain whether he was riding around with a gun and would use it.
The "stand your ground law" was never intended to protect someone who drove around in his car, looking for anyone he deemed suspicious, and then followed someone in his car and then left his car to follow, chase or confront that person.
When I went to law school, 20 years' ago, my first shock was all of the "spring-gun" cases, and learning that the law was that, if I woke up in the middle of the night and someone was at the foot of my bed, in my apartment, having broken in, that, even if I had a weapon that I could reach, I could not just shoot....but, instead, had to know whether the intruder was threatening deadly force and tell the intruder to leave... and do nothing if it appeared that he was leaving/retreating. Really? I'm alone, and some guy is standing over my bed, and I'm supposed to say "Leave" and hope that he does?
I didn't know about the "stand your ground" law until 2 weeks' ago. I don't have a gun. But, I'm glad that I know about that law now.
The "stand your ground" law is not the problem. The problem is that it is being interpreted incorrectly and used to protect aggressors who do not deserve to be legally protected.
Also, was he a resident or guest of the "gated community" where he was killed? If not, did he hop a fence to take a shortcut (sometimes referred to as "trespassing")? Details, please.
At the moment no one (other than the shooter) knows what escalated the confrontation, only the very sad result. While we're waiting to find out, perhaps the NYT might like to investigate a recent incident in my home town. No firearms involved, thank you, just a 65 yo geezer who reportedly contributed quite a bit to society before being beaten to death by an 18 yo gang-banger. This was also a tragedy, no? Maybe Mr. Motta never got "the talk" (e.g. avoid angry young black men) from his parents. I know, not PC, but....
http://www.kxly.com/news/spokane-news/Frank-Motta-dies-from-assault-inju...
Today black people in the south cannot even get lip service.....
Hopefully also there will be some rethinking of the horrendous "stand your ground" laws many states have enacted. They enable unstable "watchdogs" like Zimmerman - and many others - a license to kill.
Why does it matter whether Trayvon was a good kid or a hardened criminal or anything in between?
No one should get targeted and murdered by a vigilante just for walking down the street, period.