WASHINGTON- President Barack Obama signed into law on Thursday far-reaching new sanctions on Iran that aim to squeeze the Islamic Republic's fuel imports and deepen its international isolation. Obama said the new sanctions were the toughest ever passed by the US Congress and would make it harder for Iran to buy refined petroleum as well as goods and services to modernise its oil and natural gas sector, the mainstay of its economy. While the door to diplomacy remained open, he said, Iran would come under even greater international pressure if it continued to defy international calls to halt its uranium enrichment program. The United States and its European allies suspect Iran is trying to build an atomic bomb, despite Tehran's insistence that its nuclear program is for the peaceful generation of electricity. "There should be no doubt - the United States and the international community are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons," Obama said at the signing of the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act at the White House. European Union leaders agreed last month to tighten UN sanctions on Iran with additional measures targeting Iran's financial, banking, insurance, transportation and energy sectors. The new US sanctions go much further than the measures agreed to by the UN Security Council in June and are aimed at ratcheting up pressure on Iran to persuade it to return to international talks on its disputed nuclear program. The US sanctions penalise companies supplying Iran with gasoline and international banking institutions involved with Iran's increasingly powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or its nuclear program. Foreign banks that do business with key Iranian banks or the Revolutionary Guards will not be allowed access to the US financial system. Global suppliers of gasoline to Iran could also face bans on access to the US banking system, property transactions and foreign exchange in the United States.
