Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, the current head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, is also subject to international sanctions, but also travels regularly to meetings in Vienna. The U.S. and EU pass travel bans to great fanfare, yet ignore them completely when sanctioned officials travel to meetings of international organizations. As Congressman Ted Deutch (D-FL), a congressional leader on Iran issues, wrote in an Aug. 11 letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, these measures are meaningless if loopholes allow sanctioned Iranian officials to travel freely.
Congressman Deutch has urged the Obama administration to use current U.S. sanctions laws to prohibit any company from providing fuel to the aircraft that would enable Qasemi's air travel to and from Vienna. These same laws should be used to sanction companies refueling the aircrafts Ahmadinejad and Salehi use to fly to and from New York next week.
Ahmadinejad himself is not under U.S., European or international sanctions, despite his role in presiding over a six-year reign of terror, featuring widespread human rights abuses, the acceleration of Iran's nuclear weapons program, and the killing of U.S. and allied troops in Iraq and Afghanistan -- not to mention hundreds or perhaps even thousands of civilians.
If the United States and Europe finally stood up and sanctioned the dictator of Damascus for slaughtering his own people, why can't they do the same to the man propping him up?
More than 30 years after Iran declared war on the United States -- and only days after the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks -- Washington must recognize the centrality of the Iranian threat, and move more aggressively to counter it.
Sanctioning Ahmadinejad and keeping him and his henchmen out of New York would be a start.
