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EXCLUSIVE: A bipartisan group of House lawmakers will introduce legislation Thursday that would solidify U.S. sanctions against Iran in order to apply pressure to the regime as it attempts to obtain nuclear weapons.

The lawmakers say the legislation, titled the Solidify Iran Sanctions Act (SISA), would create a necessary deterrent by targeting the country's energy sector and making it more difficult to finance terrorist operations or develop ballistic missiles.

"From brutal abuses committed against its own people, to its never-ending threats towards free and democratic societies, the Iranian regime has proven time and again that they are a rogue state with no interest in preserving regional or global peace," said Rep. Michelle Steel, R-Calif., who is leading the bill in the House.

"It is more important than ever that we prevent the unacceptable threat of a nuclear Iran from becoming a reality. Existing sanctions have proven successful in preventing such a catastrophe, and we must ensure that we can continue to place economic and strategic pressures on Iran to prevent them from developing nuclear weapons or supporting terrorists. Im proud to partner with Senator Scott on this issue, and to lead this bipartisan group of my House colleagues to send a clear signal that the United States will not tolerate existential threats against us, our allies, or freedom and democracy around the world."

LAWMAKERS URGE BIDEN TO DENY IRANIAN PRESIDENT ENTRY INTO US FOR UN MEETING OVER 'GROSS VIOLATIONS' OF RIGHTS

FILE PHOTO: A gas flare on an oil production platform is seen alongside an Iranian flag in the Gulf July 25, 2005. (Reuters/Raheb Homavandi/File Photo)

The bill would require the "imposition of sanctions with respect to Irans illicit weapons programs, conventional weapons and ballistic missile development, and support for terrorism, including Irans Revolutionary Guards Corps."

Current co-sponsors include Reps. Susie Lee, D-Nev.; Grace Meng, D-N.Y.; Angie Craig, D-Minn.; Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J.; Joe Wilson, R-S.C.; Maria Salazar, R-Fla.; Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla.; Randy Weber, R-Texas; and Mike Waltz, R-Fla.

Rep. Michelle Steel, R-Calif.

Last month, Sens. Tim Scott, R-S.C.; Maggie Hassan, D-N.H.; Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn.; and Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., introduced the Senate version of the legislation. The bill is designed to make the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996 permanent in order to keep the U.S. and its allies safe from the threat of a nuclear Iran.

The legislation comes as the Biden administration is still negotiating the final details of a renewed nuclear deal with Iran.

The legislation comes as the Biden administration is still negotiating the final details of a renewed nuclear deal with Iran. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

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A bipartisan group of House lawmakers urged President Biden last week to deny necessary "entry visas" for Iranian President EbrahimRaisiand his delegationto attend the upcoming 77th United Nations General Assembly in New York City due to the foreign president's record of supporting terrorism and violating human rights.

Kelly Laco is a politics editor for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to Kelly.Laco@Fox.com and on Twitter: @kelly_laco.

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House Dems, GOP working together to make Iran sanctions permanent - Fox News

On January 3, 2020, the United States killed Qassem Soleimani with a drone strike just outside Baghdad International Airport. In an instant, the most powerful Iranian soldier of his generation was reduced, with his carpool companions, to smoldering bits of flesh surrounded by mangled SUV parts. The operation was not quite over. The message sent via missile was followed, a former U.S. intelligence official told me, by a verbal message, like a love note attached to a box of chocolates. The official, who worked on the Soleimani portfolio and requested anonymity to speak freely, did not see the message but says it was calculated to menace, reassure, and avoid uncontrolled escalation. He summarized it: The killing of Soleimani is an isolated event. It is not the start of a new campaign. But if you retaliateand retaliation is defined as harming even one U.S. citizen, anywherewe will hit you back harder than you hit us. You will lose every round. Your only decision is how many rounds we go, and how badly you want to be humiliated.

Read: Qassem Soleimani haunted the Arab world

Although Iran vowed revenge, and days later sent a volley of missiles into an American base in Iraqs Anbar province, it seems to have taken the valentine seriously. (No one was killed in the Anbar strike. Iran did, however, test the boundaries of the threat: More than 100 U.S. personnel were later found to have lasting neurological effects from the blasts.) But in the past six weeks, three incidents suggest that Iran is ready for another round, this time with new, more amateurish tactics.

Afshon Ostovar, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, told me that since the Soleimani assassination, Irans military and intelligence services have obsessed over proving that they, too, can kill senior officials of hostile countries. They desperately want to achieve some form of revenge, Ostovar said. But this covert stuff, like the U.S. assassination of Soleimani or Israels killing of Irans top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, is something they just havent mastered. Instead they have tried and failed to execute overseas operations, Ostovar says, and each failure has reminded them of their weakness. Killing Bolton or Pompeo, the second target in the Bolton plot, would restore confidence in their status on the international assassination scene.

But even assuming a solid connection to Iran, these three recent cases would not demonstrate that it can kill with the same professionalism and brio as the Americans and Israelis. (The Fakhrizadeh assassination is widely thought to have been carried out remotely, by killer robots that self-destructed on-site after completing their mission.) The plots to kill Bolton, Alinejad, and Rushdie are not even as sophisticated as the Mykonos affair in Berlin in 1992, which involved trained operatives, not freelance bumblers, in a Mob-style restaurant slaying.

These plots may more closely resemble Islamic State attacks in 2015, many of which involved little more than moral support from ISISs home office, in Raqqah. One of the Islamic States great strategic innovations over its doddering predecessor, al-Qaeda, was to realize that it didnt need spectacular, expensive plots like September 11, and could terrorize much more cheaply by encouraging jihadist knuckleheads abroad to stab and run down infidels using knives and rented trucks. It didnt need to train assassins and outfit them with fake IDs or diplomatic cover. It could just use volunteer or cheap contract labor, a gig assassin.

George Packer: Killing Soleimani was worse than a crime

These operations by knucklehead-proxy probably reflect the limits of what Iran can do. They may also represent Irans testing of the valentine wire, to see what it can do without getting hit back. (And not for the first time. As mentioned, service members at the base in Anbar suffered lasting injuries.) Alinejad told me that Iranians overseas already know that in Turkey, Germany, and even Canada, Irans power is great enough to threaten the lives of its enemies. Now Iran may be trying to show that it can whack Americans in the United States, too.

The Biden administration is not powerless here. Nor is escalation its only option. It considers a nuclear deal with the Iranian regime preferable to no dealand a deal would probably be set back by years by any assassination of a U.S. official, even one retired from a now-disfavored administration. (All of this raises a question: How much does Iran want a deal, anyway?) A fitting response to the development of a new campaign of murder would be to make any agreement contingent, as the one under President Barack Obama was not, on Irans renunciation of its international terror operations. Otherwise, in light of these recent cases, any compromise with Iran will look like a sweetheart deal, box of chocolates or no.

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Iran's Knucklehead Assassination Strategy - The Atlantic

Seeing an America increasingly in decline, two famed scholars have proposed a more benign world order, and have praised Irans measured responses to acts of escalation by the United States as evocative of the world they envision.

American Stephen M. Walt and Turkish Dani Rodrik, both of them acclaimed scholars at Harvard University, wrote in a joint article for Foreign Affairs September/October 2022 issue that despite global upheavals, one can envision a more benign order in which the United States, China, and other world powers compete in some areas, cooperate in others, and observe new and more flexible rules of the road.

The global order is deteriorating before our eyes, they wrote. It is increasingly clear that the existing, Western-oriented approach is no longer adequate to address the many forces governing international power relations.

They offered a four-part framework in which all actions and issues would be grouped into four general categories: those that are prohibited, those in which mutual adjustments by two or more states could benefit all parties, those undertaken by a single state, and those that require multilateral involvement.

They said that approach would do much to increase trust and reduce the possibility of conflict, including when states, even hardened adversaries, refuse to escalate or to respond to escalation with equally unruly behavior.

In a section subtitled Acting, Not Escalating, Walt and Rodrik cited Irans behavior in responding to massively escalatory acts by the United States under former President Donald Trump, including the the shortsighted U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Iran deal (known as the JCPOA) and the maximum-pressure campaign.

When the United States left the JCPOA in 2018, for example, Iran did not respond by immediately restarting its full nuclear program. Instead, it adhered to the original agreement for months afterward, they said. Even later, and as other signatories failed to uphold their end of the bargain, Iran reduced its commitment in an incremental and visibly reversible fashion, signaling its willingness to return to full compliance if the United States also did so.

Trump unilaterally withdrew from the Iran deal in 2018, and launched what he called a campaign of maximum pressure on Iran in the hopes that the country would cave in and agree to a new agreement on American terms.

Irans reaction to the Trump administrations maximum pressure campaign was also measured, Walt and Rodrik said, citing the US assassination of revered Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq in 2020, an act of provocation that led many to believe the US was provoking war. That act, the US scholars said, did not lead Iran to escalate.

General Soleimani was assassinated by the US military in Baghdad. In a statement, the Pentagon claimed responsibility for the act of terror. Iran promised revenge, but also initially responded by firing missiles at a base hosting US soldiers in Iraq. At least 109 American soldiers received brain injuries in that attack, according to the Pentagon.

Since Trumps exit from the White House in 2021, the Iran deal has been the subject of renewed negotiations over its revival. Those negotiations have slowed down more recently, however, as US President Joe Biden refuses to reverse some of Trumps actions.

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Proposing 'more benign' world order, famed Harvard scholars cite Iran's 'measured' responses to US 'escalation' - Press TV

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JERUSALEM, Israel The Biden administrations Syria policy has a laser-like focus on combating the largely defeated Islamic State terrorist movement, butsome observers say it appears to be short-sighted when it comes to zooming in on the growing threat from both Iran and Russia which could lead to more instability across the Islamic heartland.

"We have had three administrations that have not prioritized Syrian stability. If you do not attend to it, it attends to you, like the main problems in the Middle East. The instability in Syria spills over to broader changes," said Brian Katulis, a seniorfellow and vice president of policy at the Middle East Institute.

Katulis told Fox News Digital: "The instability in Syria broke the world in the last decade. Syria broke the rules of war because [President Bashar] Assad and Russiamurdered hundreds of thousands of civilians." The Syrian civil war caused waves of migration that disrupted politics in Europe and the U.S., he noted.

"What happens in Syria does not stay there," he said, but the U.S. mandate is limited to degrading the power of the Islamic State. "The presence we have in Syria is a Goldilocks presence, not too big, not too small, just right," said Katulis.

US LAUNCHES SECOND SET OF STRIKES IN SYRIA AGAINST IRANIAN-BACKED MILITIAS

USCENTCOM chief Gen. Erik Kurilla consults with officials running the al-Hol camp. (CENTCOM)

There are roughly 900 U.S. troops, including Green Berets, in Syria.

ForSinam Mohamad, the representative of the Syrian Democratic Council in the U.S., the presence of American troops can advance a troika of American security interests.

TheSyrian Democratic Council is the political wing of theSyrian Democratic Forces, an alliance ofKurdish,Arab andAssyrian/Syriac forces, as well as some smaller Armenian, Turkmen and Chechen defense units

"Terrorism is still threatening the whole world, and the Islamic State and al-Qaeda are still in northeastern and northwestern Syria," Mohamad told Fox News Digital.

She cited three reasons an enduringAmerican presence in Syria is needed.

"First, as long as these terrorist organizations are there, the threat to the U.S. and the whole world will continue. It is very important to end terrorism in Syria in partnership with Kurdish security forces", she said.

IRAN, SYRIA CONSIDER FORMING JOINT OIL AND GAS COMPANY, STATE MEDIA SAYS

Second, "if the U.S. withdraws, it will empower Iran like in Iraq." She said American deterrence "prevents regional interference from Turkey and Iran."

Third, "For 11 years there has been no political solution" to end the high-intensity combat. "We could wind up going back to before 2011, [when the civil war began], without any changes in the Syrianregime. This will empower the regime to control Syriawithout makinganychanges fordemocracy," Mohamad said.

"We need to democratize Syria," she said. "The U.S. will help and support us with democracy. The U.S. will be empowering our position when negotiating withthe Syrian regime, empowering a democratic system based on equal gender and freedom of religion. This will give us a chance to build a unique model intheMiddle East."

U.S. CENTCOM chief Gen. Erik Kurilla recently stated that Syria is becoming the "breeding ground" for a new generation of Islamic State terrorists.

U.S. CENTCOM chief Gen. Erik Kurilla surveys the al-Hol camp in Syria. (CENTCOM)

CENTCOM CHIEF BELIEVES SYRIA IS 'BREEDING GROUND' FOR NEXT GENERATION OF ISIS

Brig. Gen. (res.) Erez D. Maisel,who served 32 years in the Israel Defense Forces and is an expert on Syria, told Fox News Digital that the country is "important because of where she is, specifically, for Europe, Israel, Russia and Iran. Who rules Syria says a lot about the Middle East."

Maisel noted that the Kurdish areas in northern Syria "are of interest to Israel because we see a lot of common interests. We have good connections to the Kurds. They are a minority, and we are a minority."

Kurdish forces have conducted sweeps over the last few weeks to root out Islamic State terrorists from the sprawling al-Hol refugee camp in northern Syria that lodges 55,000 residents. The American military is a keen supporter of the anti-ISIS crackdown in the camp.

"Most importantly, Syria being at the intersection between Iran and the Med, the land bridge, is critical for any improved future for the people of the Levant," Maisel said.

ISRAELI PM TO FOX: 'WE WELCOME THE US STRIKES AGAINST THE IRANIAN REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS IN SYRIA'

Troops from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Special Operations and the U.S.-led anti-jihadist coalition, take part in heavy-weaponry military exercises in the countryside of Deir Ezzor in northeastern Syria on March 25, 2022. (DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images)

"Prolonged disruption of Iranian control of this crucial line of communication is strategically important not only to Israel, but to regional stability impacting European-NATO interests. A mission that requires measured U.S. support just enough presence to deny Iranian freedom of movement (and ISIS resurrection)."

He added, "The two important choke points into Syria are: Kurdish north (Euphrates zone of operations), basically Syrian Defense Forces controlled areas, and the tri-border area between Kingdom of Jordan, Syria and Iraq. Specifically, the U.S. CENTCOM Al Tanf Garrison.

"An important stopgap interdicting Iranian intentions to develop a supply line from Teheran, through Iraq into Syria and Lebanon."

Meanwhile, on Monday, speaking at The Jerusalem Post Conference in New York, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz presented a map showing more than 10 facilities in Masyaf, in northwestern Syria, that Iran uses to manufacture advanced missiles and other weapons for its proxies. The facilities pose a significant threat to Israel and the region, he said.

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Critics of the Iran atomic accord are deeply concerned that Irans regime will use the sanctions relief funds to pump cash into the coffers of Assads regime and boost terrorism in Syria against U.S. troops.

On Wednesday, the United States Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield announced the U.S. had provided an additional $756 million dollars in humanitarian assistance to the people of Syria. The amount is in addition to the $800 million in humanitarian aid announced in May by the administration.

A spokesperson for the State Department declined comment for this report and referred Fox News Digital to the Pentagon.

Benjamin Weinthalreports on Middle East affairs. You can follow Benjamin Weinthal on Twitter @BenWeinthal.

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More robust US presence in Syria could deter Iran, Russia and other threats and ensure stability, experts say - Fox News

Around 50,000 troops are being deployed to the Armenian border by Iran.

It has been reported this evening, Friday, September 16, that around 50,000 troops have been deployed to the Armenian border by Iran. This comes as a direct result of the recent attacks by Azerbaijan on the small state of Armenia. There are also as yet unconfirmed reports on social media sites of Turkey dispatching 45,000 reservists to the same border areas.

Iran shares a border with both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Nasser Kanaani, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman already stressed in an official government statement last Tuesday, September 13, that the Islamist Republic will not accept any changes in the borders of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Armenia.

FM Spox: #Iran not to accept any change in #Armenia#Azerbaijan borders https://t.co/3Xz3kxopbF pic.twitter.com/ssdHsiLveD

Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran (@Iran_GOV) September 13, 2022

Iran is sending 50,000 soldiers to the Armenian border. / Reports

UKR REPORT (@UKR_Report) September 16, 2022

Unconfirmed reports claim that two regiments of Irans army have already gone to the aid of Armenia and are fighting with Azerbaijani forces. It is also claimed that a large number of Azerbaijani soldiers have subsequently been killed.

Mohammad Pakpour, the commander of the IRGC ground forces, today, Friday, September 16, reportedly visited the units located on the border of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Nakhichevan. He stated that their readiness level is very high, according to Iranian media reports.

Iranian media reports that the commander of the IRGC ground forces, Mohammad Pakpour, visited the units located on the border of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan and stated that their readiness level is very high. pic.twitter.com/D1v2ARumf6

301 (@301arm) September 16, 2022

Alen Simonyan, the President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia tweeted his thanks for the support of the Iranian Government yesterday, Thursday, September 15.

. .#President_Raisi@mb_ghalibaf @HAabdollahian @iraninyerevan @armenia_of pic.twitter.com/VWLKbIb53Y

Alen Simonyan (@alensimonyan) September 15, 2022

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Iran deploying around 50,000 troops to the Armenian border - Euro Weekly News