In an op-ed published the call in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, top U.S. lawmakers Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY) called for “immediate steps” to increase pressure on Iran, urging the Senate to enact new sanctions as “the only way to persuade the Iranian leadership to change course.”  .

The Islamic Republic, one of the most brutal regimes in the world, stands at the threshold of a nuclear-weapons capability. The thought of dictators who disregard the value of human life at home and pledge genocide abroad having a nuclear weapon should frighten every American.

Engel has been a leading figure on Iran in the House, and was a co-sponsor of the recently passed Nuclear Iran Prevention Act of 2013, which overwhelmingly passed the House by a vote of 400-20. Parallel legislation sponsored by Kirk is making its way through the Senate.

The article penned by the two addresses the legitimacy of the Islamic state’s June election:

Iran did not hold a free and fair election earlier this summer. The Iranian people were forced to choose between a select group of regime insiders who had been carefully vetted and hand-picked by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. More than 600 would-be candidates were disqualified. Reformists were kept under house arrest. The Internet was tightly controlled in the weeks leading up to the vote.

Hassan Rouhani – who won the election and who has been criticized this week for assembling a foreign policy cabinet stacked with figures from Iran’s security establishment – is according to Kirk and Engel “no reformer” but instead a Khamenei loyalist. The piece is bluntly titled “Without Stronger Sanctions, Iran Will Go Nuclear.”

[Photo: OEA – OAS / Flickr]