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Legally, Many Important Iran Sanctions Cannot Be Waived
(Wall Street Journal) David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey - Some of the U.S. statutes on Iran allow the president to lift certain sanctions. But many of the most important sanctions - including sanctions against Iran's central bank - cannot be waived unless the president certifies that Iran has stopped its ballistic-missile program, ceased money-laundering and no longer sponsors international terrorism. He certainly can't do that now. The deal requires the removal of state and local Iran-related sanctions. That would have been all right if Mr. Obama had pursued a treaty with Iran, which would have bound the states, but the executive-agreement approach that he chose cannot pre-empt the authority of the states. That leaves the states free to impose their own Iran-related sanctions, as they have done in the past against South Africa and Burma. Rivkin and Casey are constitutional lawyers who served in the Justice Department under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush.