News Agencies, 16 Nov. 2016- The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved bipartisan legislation to renew a decades-old Iran sanctions law and impose new sanctions on supporters of Bashar al-Assad.

The bills were sponsored by the Republican chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Ed Royce, and the committee’s top Democrat, Representative Eliot Engel.

The Syrian sanctions legislation targets key backers of Assad such as Russia and Iran by requiring the president to penalize countries or companies that do business with or provide financing to the Syrian government, Royce said.
Lawmakers have accused the Assad government of war crimes in a five-year bloody conflict that has killed as many as half a million people, spawned Europe’s worst refugee crisis in modern times, and given room for the Islamic State group to perpetrate its brand of global extremism.
“What we have now is a grim lesson in human suffering,” Royce said. “We can see the ethnic cleansing going on. Even the United Nations calls this ‘crimes of historic proportions.’ Enough’s enough.”
Anyone that provides aircraft to Syria’s commercial airlines, does business with the transportation and telecom sectors controlled by the Syrian government, or supports the country’s energy industry would also be subject to sanctions under the legislation.
“We want to go after the things driving the war machine: money, airplanes, spare parts, oil,” Engel said. “Something needs to jolt this crisis out of its bloody status quo. This bill would give the administration more tools to do so.”
“If you’re acting as a lifeline to the Assad regime, you risk getting caught up in the net of our sanctions,” he said.
Sanctions could be suspended under the legislation if internationally recognized negotiations to resolve the war in Syria are making progress and the violence against civilians has ended.