Politico reports that House Democratic leaders are planning to move forward with new sanctions legislation that “seeks to cut supplies of refined petroleum products, especially gasoline, into Iran as a means of convincing that regime to end its nuclear weapons programs”:

“I intend to pass the bill by the end of this year,” Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told POLITICO. His bill has 339 co-sponsors in the House, and it might be taken up under a parliamentary process that allows quick approval of widely supported legislation.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md.) told fellow Democrats on Thursday morning that the bill would be brought to the floor within two weeks, according to Democratic aides. The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee passed similar legislation at the end of October, although it is unclear if and when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) plans to bring that bill up for a vote. [...]

Berman and other backers of the measure hope that the economic pain caused by disruption of those imports would force Tehran to scale back its nuclear ambitions.

I don’t know of any analyst — right or left — who thinks that this legislation will be at all effective in changing Iran’s behavior. Back in August, Gal Luft wrote that “Iran is much less vulnerable to gasoline sanctions than is commonly believed on Capitol Hill, and its foreign gasoline dependence is dropping by the day.” Under President Ahmadinejad, Iran has both increased its refining capacity and enacted a more effective petrol rationing program, both of which have, according to Luft, “slashed Iran’s need to import petroleum products.”

Luft also noted that “Iran is becoming increasingly reliant on China for its refinery expansion program — and Beijing has shown little interest in abiding by any sanctions regime initiated by the United States.”

The American Enterprise Institute’s Iran Tracker website also looked at the potential impact of petroleum sanctions, concluding that “the imposition of sanctions might generate no significant change in Iranian policy in the short term.” AEI’s report also notes that “the group that should be the target of strengthened sanctions, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), is least likely to be affected”:

Some analysts have argued that the IRGC actually benefits from a more economically isolated Iran because it no longer has to compete with foreign companies for government contracts. For example, one of the main engineering companies under IRGC control, Khatam al-Anbiya, has secured at least $7 billion in government oil, gas, and transportation contracts. Although IRGC companies do not always have the necessary technical expertise for some projects, they still generate revenue by acting as an intermediary between the government and international companies. IRGC members may continue to receive government contracts and subsidy money even if the government adjusted domestic economic policies.

Perhaps just as significantly, leaders and spokespersons of Iran’s Green Movement have rejected these sanctions, arguing that they would hurt the Iranian people while doing little to affect the regime. In September, Mir Hossein Mousavi said sanctions “will impose agonies on a nation who suffers enough from miserable statesmen.”

In a recent interview with the Washington Times’ Barbara Slavin, Iranian dissident Mohsen Makhmalbaf “specifically rejected gasoline sanctions, “saying [they] would hurt average people.” While Makhmalbaf also said that “it was better to focus on the Revolutionary Guards,” as the above reports indicate, sanctions on refined petroleum products — especially of the unilateral sort proposed in the Berman bill — are a particularly ineffective instrument for doing this. Far from forcing Iran to scale back its nuclear program, the threat of these sanctions seems only to have motivated the Iranian regime to move more quickly to harden itself against their effects.

Last week, Republican National Committee member Jim Bopp unveiled a resolution to deny funding of candidates who do not uphold right-wing conservative values. The “purity test” is based on the mantra of former President Ronald Reagan. Yesterday, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer pointed out that, despite the fact that Reagan supported a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants, the purity test refers to his position as “amnesty” and is explicitly opposed to it. Guest and tea party operative Dick Armey indicated that he doesn’t believe the anti-immigrant language should have been included:

BLITZER: Well, there’s one, number five, that jumped out at me, because they make a big deal about Ronald Reagan. “We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants.”

Ronald Reagan supported amnesty for illegal immigrants, as you’ll recall.

ARMEY: I understand that, and it’s one of the most controversial issues out there. If you take a look at the list though, the primary component, parts of the list, the majority are fiscal issues. And the fiscal conservative center of American politics is what they are trying to reach out to.

So, I know they have to have issues like amnesty and they have some other issues, but I would prefer not to have had done.

Watch it:

Far from being directed at the “fiscal conservative center,” the purity test draws a line in the sand between moderate Republicans and the Party’s rabid right-wing faction. While Armey generally subscribes to ultraconservative orthodoxy, he has long been opposed to anti-immigrant fear mongering — referring to xenophobe, former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), as the “cheerleader of jerkiness in the immigration debate.” He’s also pointed out that building a fence along the U.S. – Mexico border is not a good Latino-voter outreach strategy for the GOP and has instead proposed privatizing the US immigration system to allow in immigrants who love liberty and are willing to obey the law.

Harsh immigration policies also aren’t good for Armey’s pocketbook or his right-wing movement. In 2006, Armey’s lobbying firm started getting paid by the Senado de Republica (Mexican Senate) to “enhance U.S.-Mexico relations,” specifically on immigration policy. Furthermore, only 9% of Republican voters cite immigration as one of their top issues and 89% of Republicans support comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to legalization. Armey’s Tea Party movement may be made up of nothing more than the GOP’s lunatic fringe, but his tea parties were still far better attended than the puny “copycat” protests orchestrated by anti-immigrant groups.

In 1986, Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) which put millions of undocumented immigrants on a path to legalization and encouraged many Latino voters to embrace the Republican Party. Though George W. Bush won a big chunk of Latino voters in 2000 and 2004, the GOP lost most of its Latino supporters in 2008 after right-wingers killed a 2007 comprehensive immigration reform bill with lies and vitriol.

Conservative complaints concerning the START treaty’s verification measures are very similar to those on Afghanistan – after ignoring the issue for the last decade, conservatives are suddenly gung ho.

At a Heritage conference this Tuesday on START, panelist after panelist warned of the dangers of what will happen when the treaty expires on December 5th. Of key concern to the panelists is the facility at Votkinsk, which according to a Washington Times story, will be vacated by US monitors this Saturday, leaving a key nuclear facility unobserved. Timothy Morrison, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) foreign policy aide, sounded the alarms in his presentation at Heritage: “We are heading to December 5th, with no real idea what the world will look like on December 6th.”

Yet Jeffrey Lewis at Arms Control Wonk assesses the same Washington Times piece and notes that the story actually contains a nugget that implicates the Bush administration for the closing of the Votkinsk facility. Paula A. DeSutter, Assistant Secretary of State for Verification, Compliance and Implementation in the Bush administration was quoted in the story saying, “We didn’t need the entire verification regime from START.” Lewis notes that the story confirms a rumor that the Bush administration ended monitoring:

The key grafs confirm that rumor that the Bush Administration made the concession to Russia on ending monitoring at Votkinsk in November 2008.

According to Lewis, in trying to place blame on the Obama administration, “DeSutter suggests the [Obama] Administration could have just ‘added’ monitoring back in if it wanted.” Lewis noting how ridiculous this is, merely added this “just floors me.” International negotiations take place between countries. The START talks are not between Bush and Russia, or Obama and Russia, but between the United States and Russia. Once Bush agreed to bind the US to a position, the Obama administration couldn’t simply undue what was agreed to.

In other words, the Washington Times story confirms that the reason monitoring is ending at Votkinsk is because the Bush administration locked the Obama administration in by giving into Russian demands – not because the Obama administration didn’t care about verification or bungled the negotiations, as conservatives are suggesting. The Obama administration – like on almost every issue – inherited a bum hand from the Bush administration on START.