US Ambassador Nominee Would Push France to Sanction Iran
Real estate developer Charles Kushner, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be U.S. ambassador to France, said May 1 that he would encourage the French government to reimpose sanctions on Iran for violating its nuclear-weapons-related obligations.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
“The fact that they have that right and have not used it is a shame,” Kushner testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a hearing on his and other nominations. “I think we should be standing up and really lobbying very, very hard for them to exercise it.”
Kushner made his comments in response to questioning by Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., who introduced a resolution in February urging France, Germany and the U.K. to restore the U.N. sanctions before they expire in October (see 2502130062). Ricketts said the sanctions would give the U.S. leverage as it seeks to reach a nuclear deal with Iran.
Also during the hearing, Kushner said he would encourage France to buy more U.S. liquefied natural gas to reduce its reliance on Russian supplies and lower the U.S. trade deficit with France.
In other testimony, investment firm founder Joseph Popolo, Trump’s nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, agreed to a request from committee Chairman Jim Risch, R-Idaho, to convey U.S. appreciation to the Dutch for curbing sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China. Risch said the Dutch “have been very good with us as far as understanding that selling the highest technology to the Chinese is a real problem for national security. They’ve been tremendous in that regard.” The Netherlands announced expanded export controls on such equipment in January (see 2501150057).
In response to questioning by Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., Popolo pledged to work with him to speed up the U.S. foreign military sales process. Hagerty said the process “is sclerotic. It takes too long.” The senator noted that the State Department recently approved a possible $2.2 billion sale of Tomahawk missiles and related equipment to the Netherlands (see 2504250060).