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U.S. Three Years Late in Slapping Certain Sanctions on Iran
(Al-Monitor) Julian Pecquet - Under the Iran, North Korea and Syria Nonproliferation Act (INKSNA), the State Department is supposed to inform Congress every six months of attempts to help the three countries obtain weapons of mass destruction and certain missile technology. The law requires the agency to sanction violators or justify its decision not to. But the department has fallen way behind in recent years, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, with Congress receiving an update on violations committed in 2011 only in December 2014. "The imposition of sanctions no sooner than 3 or more years after the transfer occurred may diminish the credibility of the threatened sanction," the report concludes. The State Department faults a complex web of agency reviews to make sure allegations of violations are substantiated.