Hillary Clinton is now claiming to be the architect of crippling sanctions on the Iranian economy. But during her tenure as Secretary of State, her department repeatedly opposed or tried to water down an array of measures that were pushed into law by Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

Speaking at the American Jewish Committee on Wednesday, Clinton said that she and President Obama faced a “hard choice” when deciding to both reach out to Iran and increase the pressure on the Iranian government and economy, a not so subtle pitch for her upcoming memoir Hard Choices, which hits bookstores next month. She portrayed the multi-year effort to impose several increasingly tough sanctions measures against Iran as largely led by the administration.

“With the help of Congress, the Obama administration imposed some of the most stringent crippling sanctions on top of the international ones… our goal was to put so much financial pressure on Iran’s leaders that they would have no choice but to come back to the negotiating table with a serious offer,” she said. “We went after Iran’s oil industry, banks, and weapons programs, enlisted insurance firms, shipping lines, energy companies, financial institutions and others to cut Iran off from global commerce.”

Clinton referred indirectly to a series of bills passed from 2009 through 2012 that attacked Iran’s ability to export goods, participate in international financial markets, and continue with its illicit activities and money laundering.

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