"If Dutch-Shell [sic] moves forward with its proposed $10-bn deal with Iran, it will be sanctioned. If Malaysia moves forward with a similar deal, it too will be sanctioned. The same treatment will be accorded to China and India should they finalize deals with Iran. "The corporate barons running giant oil companies, who have cravenly turned a blind eye to Iran's development of nuclear weapons, have come to assume that the Iran Sanctions Act will never be implemented. This charade will now come to a long overdue end," Mr Lantos said in a hearing before the House committee on the subject of The Iranian Challenge. The new legislation is designed to further strengthen the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act by closing loopholes that energy companies had reportedly used to continue business with Iran. It is also to generate fresh pressure on the Bush administration to apply strict sanctions, with the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline, currently under negotiation, expected to be a major casualty. US undersecretary of state for political affairs Nicholas Burns said that the Bush administration was in talks with oil company executives and heads of governments who were considering signing project deals with Iran. The US has made it clear throughout that it is opposed to the IPI gas pipeline. The issue has acquired added urgency as the price negotiations are nearly over, and Iran, Pakistan and India are all set to move into the implementation stage of the project. The old legislation gives the US administration the authority to impose sanctions against Pakistan and India, and Tom Lantos' bill now further ensures that even the companies seeking to lay the pipeline come under strict sanctions. Royal Dutch-Shell, Repsol, Statoil, Norsk Hydro, Australia LNG, and China's National Offshore Oil Corporation are some of the companies that would be affected is the new legislation becomes law. Several companies have been in touch with the three governments concerning the IPI pipeline, but will not remain as enthusiastic if the new US legislation comes into force. The Lantos bill also expresses the "sense of the Congress" that the US should "encourage foreign governments to direct state-owned entities to cease all investment in Iran's energy sector." It also urges "moderate Arab states" to use "their economic leverage to dissuade other nations, including the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China, from assisting Iran's nuclear programme directly or indirectly." The legislation requires the US President to keep the US Congress informed about the countries that have, or have not, complied with the provisions of the act and report on "investment and pre-investment activity by any person or entity that could contribute to the enhancement of Iran's ability to develop petroleum resources in Iran." Interestingly and, to this writer at any rate, absurdly, the act seeks to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, to which Iran's President Ahmadinejad belongs, as a foreign terrorist organization, and to place it on the list of specially-designated global terrorists, as well as on the list of proliferators of 'weapons of mass destruction' and their supporters. It seeks to draw a distinction between the government of Iran and the people for whom, the legislation claims, "the American people have feelings of friendship." At the same time it expresses support for international diplomatic efforts, maintaining that the US "should use diplomatic and economic means to resolve the Iranian nuclear programme." The US, the Lantos bill suggests, should support IAEA and UN Security Council efforts to bring an end to Iran's nuclear-enrichment and -weapons programme and it suggests economic measures to tackle what it describes as Iran's "defiance".