Free Iran:  Preventing the regime from selling Iran’s oil should be America’s #1 priority.  So long as the regime has access to Iran’s oil income, it can repress the Iranian people, pursue its nuclear ambition and interfere in Iraq & Afghanistan.  The Obama administration needs to focus on the source of the regime’s strength , Iran’s oil income, and not so much on the regime’s tentacles.

Iran’s state shipping company has changed the names and ownership of most of its vessels to evade U.S. sanctions, but the Treasury Department has yet to update the blacklist that U.S. companies use to verify they are in compliance, according to a new report.

As a result, some firms are at risk of doing business with the company, Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, despite a ban that has been in place since 2008, says the report by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a Washington-based nonprofit watchdog.

The findings raise questions about the effectiveness of some of Washington’s sanctions, which are aimed at pressuring the regime in Tehran not to build nuclear weapons—something Iran denies it is doing.  “Iran has made more of an effort to circumvent the sanctions imposed on IRISL than the United States has made to enforce them,” the report states. “This pattern must change if sanctions are to be effective.”