Former US State Department Expert: Oil Embargos on Iran Endanger US Security http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=9003161115

A former member of Iran's Desk at the US State Department warned the Congress that any oil sanction against Iran would seriously endanger the United States' national security.Director of Research at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and a former Iran Desk Officer at the US Department of State, Reza Marashi, underlined in an article on the US sanctions and embargos on Iran that broad-based sanctions don't affect Iran's strategic decision-making and rather backfire. 

Marashi said that to the surprise of few, new Iran sanctions legislation was recently introduced in the House and Senate, shortly before this year's AIPAC conference commenced."In what has become a game of domestic political one-upsmanship, some members of the Congress are now supporting Iran-related legislation that would effectively seek to impose an oil embargo on the Islamic Republic - irrespective of the economic costs to the US or the humanitarian costs to the Iranian people -

and reduce President Obama's waiver authority on sanctions that run counter to the US national interests," he added.He said ostensibly, sanctions are devised as a multi-level (unilateral and multilateral) strategy to sharpen Iran's choices, and make Iran give up its nuclear program. "In practice, political constraints at home and abroad inhibit America's ability to move beyond tactics centered on sanctions, and instead toward a strategy that deconstructs the US-Iran institutionalized enmity through sustained diplomacy. 

"Sanctions are a tool that American policymakers know - they know how to add them, change them, intensify them, push them through Congress, and negotiate them bilaterally and at the UN. "Lesser known is how Iran perceives this paradigm that seemingly traps US policy. Indeed, the logic of some in Congress (and the Obama administration) regarding what sanctions can achieve is largely misguided," he added.