Only tougher sanctions — not more talk — can force Tehran to stop the centrifuges”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish human rights NGO, today urged two leading US Senators to push for the immediate adoption of the Nuclear Iran Prevention Act, which earlier passed the House with broad bi-partisan support.

In letters sent this morning to Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Tim Johnson (D-SD), Chairs of the Foreign Relations and Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, respectively, Center officials disagreed with the White House’s push to give Iranians more time to stop their nuclear program.

The letters, sent by Simon Wiesenthal Center founder and dean Rabbi Marvin Hier and Center associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, read in part: “…it is clear that only further sanctions, not talk, can stop the centrifuges... It is important to remember that the Iranians are now celebrating the 10th anniversary of lying about their nuclear ambitions. The world can't afford to allow them to celebrate another anniversary of obfuscation…The Ayatollah Khamenei’s latest verbal assault on the Jewish state of Israel belies any so-called charm offensive by newly installed President Rouhani. Rouhani himself has bragged how he helped string out earlier nuclear talks dating back a decade. Unless and until the Iranian regime gives full, immediate and unencumbered access to all sites to outside inspection, anything they say cannot be believed."

“The only hope of stopping the program in the eleventh hour, is the threat of an even more powerful sanctions program, already approved by the US House of Representatives,” Hier and Cooper said last week following reports that the White House was urging a delay in sanctions. “Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Israel and all of Iran’s neighbors, know that a nuclear Iran will lead to a total destabilization of an already roiling region and a headlong rush by other states to join the nuclear weapons club,” they added.

“The Wiesenthal Center urges the Senate to vote on the bill immediately and for the President to sign it. Unless and until the Iranians can prove they have stopped their nuclear program, they deserve no moratorium on sanctions,” Rabbi Hier and Rabbi Cooper concluded.

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The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino