Ryan Crocker (Credit: AP)

Part of the current U.S. strategy in forcing Iran to divulge more about and rein in its nuclear program is the use of economic sanctions. Rather than forcing a new conciliatory posture from Iran, former U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker believes a new wave of U.S.-imposed unilateral sanctions could instead have a chilling effect on efforts to diplomatically solve the standoff.

“Sanctions are easy to do, and afterwards we can tell ourselves that, ‘By God, we’ve really stuck it to them,’” Crocker said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “But it seems to me that the more you press this regime, the more they dig in.”

In his role as a member of The Iran Project, a bipartisan expert panel examining the Iranian nuclear standoff, Crocker signed a report issued last month that stressed many of the same points as in his L.A. Times interview. “The United States should now dedicate as much energy and creativity to negotiating directly with Iran as it has to assembling a broad international coalition to pressure and isolate Iran,” the report suggested, noting that the current sanctions strategy has the potential to backfire.

Secretary of State John Kerry sought to stress a similar view to Congress in April, asking the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to delay any new sanctions push until at the very least after Iran’s upcoming presidential elections. “There’s an enormous amount of jockeying going on, with the obvious normal tension between hard-liners and people who want to make an agreement,” Kerry explained during a committee hearing. “We don’t need to spin this up at this point in time. … You need to leave us the window to try to work the diplomatic channel.”

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Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) Photo: AP

China has been engaged in territorial disputes with several of its neighbors — including Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam — over ownership of several small island chains and their potential natural resources for years now. The Obama administration has been seeking to broker a diplomatic solution to the conflict, urging negotiation through various forums.

Taking that advice to heart, the Philippines has filed an arbitration claim against China at International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea, in an effort to gain a binding decision on the matter. Congressman Royce, currently traveling as part of a delegation to the Philippines, added his voice to the plea that China participate in the proceedings:

“It is best that China joins the process so that we can move forward under international law,” the California Republican told The Associated Press after meeting Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario and other diplomats in Manila.

“We want to calm the tensions,” Royce said. “We want this approached from the standpoint of diplomacy, and that is what we are conveying because in that way we don’t create crisis which roils the markets or creates uncertainty.”

Royce’s position is perfectly sensible and speaks to the importance of the role that arbitration plays in solving international disputes before they reach the point of violence. The United States, however, would be unable to avail itself of the Tribunal’s arbitration to get itself out of similar maritime quarrels. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which forms the authority of the Tribunal, has yet to be ratified by the U.S. Senate, despite being signed in 1994.

UNCLOS came closer than it ever has to acheiving the two-thirds vote necessary to come into effect during the last Congress. Support for treaty poured in from almost all sides — including in testimony from representatives of big business such as the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, members of the military, and five former Republican Secretaries of States — urging ratification.

The treaty still died at the hands of Republicans in the Senate, who seemed to take the word of conspiracy theorists over American interests. It may eventually come that the U.S. will require aid similar to the Philippines in working with China, aid that UNCLOS won’t be able to provide.

Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) has announced that he is planning to introduce a national version of Arizona’s immigration law, SB-1070. According to Royce, his legislation would give state-level cops and local law enforcement nationwide the authority to enforce federal immigration laws. In an interview with Fox News this morning, Royce laid out his plans:

FOX NEWS: Number one, you want to give local police — including state troopers at the state level — the authority to enforce immigration laws. Which is identical to Arizona, right?

ROYCE: It’s a force multiplier. We’re basically giving them the option, if you’re in local law enforcement to assist. [...] We need a force multiplier for the border patrol. [...]

FOX NEWS: Even with a Republican majority in the House can this pass, do you have enough support for this?

ROYCE: We have enough support for this in the House to pass this legislation, but then we’ll be up against the Senate. And in the Senate it’s going to depend upon how much pressure certain senators feel from the American public.

Watch it:

It’s worth noting that if the language of Royce’s bill mirrors his description of it, it’s still not exactly a duplication of Arizona’s law. SB-1070 doesn’t give police officers the option to enforce federal immigration laws, it requires them to.

However, Royce’s proposal is troubling for other reasons. In 1996 the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) determined that, under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), local police officers can only enforce the Act’s criminal provisions (entering the country illegally) and do not have the authority to arrest immigrants for simply being illegally present in the country. However, in 2005, a controversial legal opinion issued by Jay S. Bybee of the OLC was released that deemed the OLC’s 1996 opinion “mistaken.” “We further assume that States have conferred on state police the necessary state-law authority to to make arrest for violation of the federal immigration laws,” wrote Bybee. The 1996 decision — which some argue was actually written by SB-1070 architect Kris Kobach, who was employed by Bybee at the time — has been slammed on various accounts as based on a selective and misconstrued reading of case law.

Congress has the power to regulate immigration, so Royce’s bill could essentially make the OLC decision the law of the land. In arguing against Bybee’s memo, the Migration Policy Center cited several of the decision’s potential negative effects, including, “the potential damage to police-community relations; the diversion of resources from the prevention and punishment of crimes that may be of greater concern to the residents of particular cities and states; the potential for conscious or unconscious racial profiling; the costs to law enforcement of being compelled to release wrongfully arrested individuals; and the distraction of attention from security-related reforms of the INS at a time when that agency is facing radical restructuring.” Since a congressional action would carry even more weight, these effects would likely be amplified.

Ultimately, it’s extremely unlikely Royce’ bill will get past the Senate and even less likely that the current president will sign off on it. But it will continue to distract Congress from working on legislative solutions to the nation’s broken immigration system.