State Department Deputy Spokesman Tom H. Casey Holds State Department Regular News Briefing

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State Department Deputy Spokesman Tom H. Casey Holds State Department Regular News Briefing

STATE DEPARTMENT REGULAR NEWS BRIEFING

MAY 24, 2007

SPEAKER: STATE DEPARTMENT DEPUTY SPOKESMAN TOM H. CASEY

[*] CASEY: Well, good afternoon, everybody. I don't have any opening statements or announcements for you, so let's see what you've got.

QUESTION: The president said that he believed that the U.N. sanctions regime against Iran should be strengthened. And he said he'd discussed the matter with Secretary Rice, I think, this morning.

Can you shed any light on how it might be strengthened, whether it might, for example, seek to tighten up on foreign export credits or make the arms embargo mandatory?

CASEY: Well, I don't want to, again, try and get ahead of the diplomacy, either in New York or more broadly with the P-5-plus-1.

But I think, as the president's statement made clear, we are now at a point where, unfortunately, because Iran hasn't complied with the requirements of the Security Council and the international community, we do need to move forward with another round of sanctions.

And the P-5-plus-1, in putting together their original proposal, included, as you know, both the negative pathway of sanctions as well as the positive pathway of negotiations.

And there's a wide range of measures, I think, that are still available for the council to look at, that would place some increasing pressure on the Iranian regime.

And certainly, if you look at the effect of the sanctions that have been imposed to date, a number of them have had an impact on Iran's ability to continue to do business as usual.

And that also includes an impact that it's had on commercial banks...

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