The Trump administration announced Friday it will reinstate sanctions on Iranian institutions and companies as the next step of its exit from the multilateral nuclear deal. Cabinet officials also pushed back on criticism from opponents of the deal that the United States is not going far enough to fulfill the administration’s goal of “maximum pressure” on Iran. The sanctions, which go into effect at midnight on November 5, are “aimed at depriving the regime of the revenues that it uses to spread death and destruction around the world,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a Friday conference call with reporters.
These reimposed sanctions, which were lifted during the Obama administration as part of the nuclear deal, will target several sectors of the Iranian economy, including energy, shipbuilding, shipping, and banking. The major focus on the administration’s efforts is to cut off Iran’s oil export revenue, with Pompeo noting that those exports have already decreased by “more than” 1 million barrels a day since President Trump announced the exit from the Iran deal in May. Pompeo said eight nations will receive “temporary allotments” from the sanctions due to their ongoing cooperation with the United States.
Before Friday’s announcement, Iran hawks in Congress and elsewhere in Washington were expressing concern over what the administration would do with respect to limiting Iranian institutions access to financial transaction messaging services, the largest of those being the Brussels-based SWIFT network. These hawks, Politico reported, were apparently in agreement with Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, that the administration’s plan was not restrictive enough. A spokesman for the national security council declined to comment.
On the conference call, Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin responded to these criticisms by calling it “misinformation” and stating the administration would indeed be imploring SWIFT to cut off designated Iranian institutions. “We have advised SWIFT that Treasury will aggressively use its authorities as necessary to continue intense economic pressure on the Iranian regime and that SWIFT would be subject to U.S. sanctions if it provides financial messaging services to certain designated Iranian financial institutions,” Mnuchin said. “We have advised SWIFT that it must disconnect any Iranian financial institutions that we designate as soon as technologically feasible to avoid sanctions exposure.”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2018
Asked which institutions would be cut off from the network, Mnuchin responded that a list would be released Monday and “will be substantially longer” than the list of institutions that had previously been disconnected under sanctions prior to the nuclear deal.
Mnuchin also stated that, as it was prior to the deal, “humanitarian transactions to non-designated entities” will be allowed to continue using the system. “But banks must be very careful that these are not disguised transactions or they could be subject to certain sanctions.” Some Iran hawks have expressed concern that such humanitarian transactions could be masking transactions being used to fund Iranian-backed terrorism. Asked how SWIFT entities could be expected to monitor these transactions closely enough, Mnuchin responded that “financial institutions have liability for any transactions that go through SWIFT or any other mechanisms.”
Pompeo, meanwhile, expressed confidence that the United States is placing maximum pressure on Iran’s government largely by targeting the energy industry. “One-hundred percent of the revenue Iran receives from the sale of crude oil will be held in foreign accounts and can be used by Iran only for humanitarian trade or bilateral trade in non-sanctioned goods and services,” he said.
