Sanctions the Trump administration imposed on Iran after the country conducted another ballistic missile launch are more symbolic than punitive, a former Obama administration Treasury Department official said Monday.
The Trump administration warned Iran it would be “on notice” after a recent ballistic missile launch and proceeded to impose sanctions on 25 entities linked to Iran’s ballistic missile program and support for terrorism Friday. The move was broadly interpreted as the start of a new era of cracking down on illicit Iranian conduct.
Former Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing Daniel Glaser, a 20-year veteran of the Treasury Department, described the sanctions as a symbolic move rather than one that will put financial pressure on Tehran.
“I saw that as more of a signaling of intention … than I did a real effort to create real financial pressure on Iran,” Glaser said during a conference hosted by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance.
“What separates the United States application of sanctions from just about anybody else’s in the world, still, to this day, is that our application of sanctions are a lot more than just a glorified press release,” he continued. “Our sanctions not only are enforced vigorously but they occur within the context of a strategy to apply financial pressure. They are not simply to announce our displeasure. They are not simply to ‘name and shame.'”
The evaluation comes amid growing bipartisan support for additional ballistic missile sanctions in Congress, as well as praise from GOP lawmakers that the Trump administration will not hesitate to punish the tests as Obama officials did.
The Obama administration levied some similar sanctions on entities related to Iranian ballistic missile procurement last January, but remained reluctant to punish Iranian test-fires in the months that followed for fear of endangering the nuclear deal, experts told THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
“Depending on what criterion is used, Iran tested at least 12 ballistic missiles from the time the [nuclear deal] was inked to when President Obama left office,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior Iran analyst at FDD. “Only in one instance was Iran met with new designations from the Treasury Department, which were delayed.”
Administration officials had told Congress during debate over the nuclear deal that Iranian ballistic missile launches would violate United Nations Security Council resolutions.
After the implementation of the deal, officials hesitated to call Iranian test-fires a violation and instead described them as “inconsistent with” UNSCR 2231, which affirms the nuclear deal and calls on Tehran not to engage in such activities. The shift triggered congressional calls to investigate whether Congress had been misled during the debate over the deal.
The Trump White House last week described Iran’s ballistic missile launch as a “violation.”
