House committee advances bipartisan bill to make Iran sanctions permanent

FIRST ON FOX: The House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced a bipartisan bill on Wednesday to make the 1996 sanctions against Iran permanent.

Reps. Michelle Steel, R-Calif., and Susie Lee, D-Nev., alongside committee chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, are the muscle behind the Solidifying Iran Sanctions Act (SISA) that is heading to a full vote on the House floor.

The bill would make permanent the 1996 economic sanctions against Iran that that are credited with stunting their research and development of nuclear and biological weapons as well as preventing terroristic actions against the U.S. and its Arab allies and partners.

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The measure passed out of committee unanimously by voice vote and will be headed to the full House floor for a vote.

“I am very grateful to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs for voting to pass my bill, the Solidifying Iran Sanctions Act today,” Steel said in a press release exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital.

“Iran’s evil regime has proven they cannot be trusted to negotiate in good faith,” Steel continued. “Only through strength can we show the path to peace, end their brutal attacks on their own people, and prevent a nuclear Iran.”

“By making these sanctions permanent, the U.S. is signaling to Iran that we will not tolerate their continued aggression and to our allies that they must also increase their pressure on the [rogue] nation,” the California Republican added.

McCaul commended Steel for her bill and said he is “proud to support this important legislation.”

“This bill takes the long overdue step of striking the arbitrary sunset from the Iran Sanctions Act, so that sanctions against the regime will only be lifted if Iran stops its threatening behavior,” the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman said.

Lee said the bipartisan bill “is one step closer to becoming law and keeping Iran in check.”

“Regardless of political party, Congress must stand firm against the Iranian regime’s brutal repression of its own people, its funding of terrorism abroad, and its reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons,” Lee said.

The bill has a growing bipartisan list of cosponsors from across the country, including Reps. August Pfluger, R-Texas, Donald Norcross, D-N.J., Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., and Brad Sherman, D-Calif.

Steel’s bill comes as President Biden is reported to be in talks with Iran leaders to curtail Tehran’s nuclear development.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday once again made it clear he is opposed to any “mini-agreements” between the U.S. and Iran on a nuclear deal following reports last week that diplomatic talks between Washington and Tehran had been quietly ongoing. 

The Israeli prime minister reiterated that Israel “will do whatever it needs to, with its own means, to defend itself from Iranian aggression both in the nuclear sphere and, of course, through its use of terrorist proxies.”

“We have made it clear to our American friends time and again… that we oppose the agreements,” Netanyahu said. “We have also told them that the most limited understandings, what are termed ‘mini-agreements,’ do not – in our view – serve the goal, and we are opposed to them as well.”

Steel’s bill passed out of committee on Wednesday and is expected to receive a full vote on the House floor.

Fox News Digital’s Caitlin McFall contributed reporting.