Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Monday called on President Barack Obama to increase pressure on Iran, with all but one member of the committee signing on to a bipartisan letter emphasizing that the election of Hassan Rouhani to be Iran’s next president will do nothing to moderate Iran’s nuclear stance.

“Iran’s election unfortunately has done nothing to suggest a reversal of Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapons capacity,” the lawmakers wrote to Mr. Obama. “President-elect Rouhani, who served as a nuclear negotiator for Iran at a time its illicit program was well underway, indicated his support for Iran’s nuclear ambitions in his first post-election news conference.”

The letter also notes that “decisions about Iran’s nuclear program and foreign policy rest mainly in the hands of Iran’s “Supreme Leader” Ali Khamenei. During the election Khamenei preemptively prohibited the eventual winner from making concessions to the West. The letter comes amid renewed scrutiny of how Iran has been able to evade the current sanctions regime.

Last month the magazine Foreign Policy published a leaked U.N. report detailing Iran’s sanctions-busting activity and describing 11 distinct instances in which Iran has violated sanctions, including attempts to acquire infrastructure usable for its atomic program.

This morning Reuters published an expose outlining how Iran is exploiting sanctions loopholes in order to import ore from Germany and France that could be used for making armor and missiles.

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