The Trump administration will reimpose sanctions on Iran Tuesday, focusing on Iranian transactions involving metals like gold, steel, and graphite. The new sanctions, part of an effort to roll back the multi-nation nuclear deal that will culminate in the full reimposition of sanctions later this year, comes as the Iranian regime battles domestic unrest and protests over a struggling economy.
“What’s happening today is part of a coordinated campaign of pressuring Tehran,” said a senior administration official Monday. The U.S. government says the new sanctions are designed to deny the regime’s ability to fund terrorism abroad and other malign activity, including the pursuit of a nuclear program that violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration. The administration cited statutory authority to reimpose sanctions.
“We are very intent on using these authorities,” said a senior administration official. “We will use them aggressively.” The complete reimposition of sanctions that were lifted after the 2015 agreement, known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, will come in November. The Trump administration pulled out of the JCPOA in May of this year, citing the “defective” nature of the deal itself in curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions along with Tehran’s record of malign activity.
Noting President Donald Trump’s public offer last week to Iranian president Hassan Rouhani to have a meeting with “no preconditions” on the possibility of sanctions relief, a senior administration official said Monday the Iranian people do not have to suffer more economic pain if their government is willing to negotiate. “None of this needs to happen. He will meet with the Iranian leadership at any time,” said the official.
A senior administration official said doing business with Iran is a “losing proposition” and said the country may go into a “long-term economic tailspin.” “We hope that the Iranian regime will think seriously about the consequences their behavior is having on their own people,” said the official.
Officials did not immediately respond to questions about whether the administration has made any more direct and specific offers to have a meeting since Trump’s remarks last week. Nor did the administration respond to a question about Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s suggestion that any such meeting would, in fact, have preconditions regarding Iranian behavior.
“If the Iranians demonstrate a commitment to make fundamental changes in how they treat their own people, reduce their malign behavior, can agree that it’s worthwhile to enter into a nuclear agreement that actually prevents proliferation, then the president said he’s prepared to sit down and have the conversation with them,” Pompeo told CNBC last week.
