In the final days of the 2018 campaign, President Trump has been touting his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal as evidence that “Promises Made, Promises Kept” is more than just an empty slogan. With Monday’s confirmation that the administration is stopping well short of fully reimposing sanctions on the terrorist regime, however, Trump is actually proving the opposite. Months after Trump announced he was ripping up the Iran deal with much bombast, his administration is effectively helping Europeans keep it in place.
To be sure, European governments who worked with President Obama to secure the Iran nuclear deal would be much happier had Trump simply remained in the deal outright rather than withdrawing from it and reimposing many sanctions, as he has done. That said, it was more or less baked into the cake when Trump got elected that the Iran policy would be different from Obama. What Europeans have been hoping for is to keep Iran connected to the world economy just enough for just long enough to keep the deal alive, so that if and when Trump is replaced by a Democrat, the new president can easily loosen sanctions and rejoin the deal. This is essentially what former Secretary of State John Kerry was up to when he was meeting with Iran and other world leaders and telling them to wait out Trump.
From the European perspective, Monday should be seen as mission accomplished. Though Trump is by no means boosting Iran, he is not pulling the plug, either. When Trump withdrew from the Iran deal in May, he set up a process for the reimposition of all previous sanctions, giving businesses time to adjust and untangle their financial relationships with Iran. The first group of sanctions were reimposed in August, and the second group of sanctions, concerning oil and banking, were due to reimposed on Monday — following 180 days from when Trump pulled out of the deal.
In pulling out of the deal, Trump administration officials argued that they would no longer be handcuffed, and could now exert “maximum pressure” on the Iranian regime. Europeans were hoping that when push came to shove, Trump would give ground on three major areas: oil, banking, and “civil” nuclear cooperation. Monday’s announcements include concessions on all three fronts.
First, the Treasury and State Departments announced waivers from oil sanctions to China, India, Italy, Greece, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and even Turkey.
Next, the administration stopped short of completely disconnecting Iran from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication system, a network through which global banks communicate that is crucial to accessing international markets. Though it designated some banks that would be cut off, other banks will be allowed to remain connected. There will be exceptions made for “humanitarian” transactions — a loophole that Iran has exploited in the past.
Finally, and most surprisingly, the administration has granted waivers allowing foreign firms to continue “civil” nuclear work with Iran’s Arak, Bushehr, and Fordow facilities — a key part of the Iran deal. Though the State Department released a statement claiming these facilities would “continue under the strictest scrutiny to ensure transparency and maintain constraints on Iran,” allowing this to continue merely perpetuates the global connection to Iran’s nuclear program, thus keeping it more entrenched.
Having said all of this, it’s worth keeping in mind that nothing in Monday’s announcement would prevent Trump from going further in the coming months. So for those of us who were hoping on a tougher line against Iran, there are two ways to look at this news. If this is yet another step of ratcheting up pressure on Iran to work toward the ultimate goal of inflicting “maximum pressure” on Iran more gradually, then we could eventually end up in the right place. However, if administration officials try to pass off Monday’s actions as having implemented “maximum pressure” and move on, then they will have essentially succeeded in preserving the Iran deal.
Unfortunately, neither Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin nor Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were particularly clear on this point.
“The U.S. has reimposed tough sanctions on #Iran’s regime as part of our relentless pressure campaign to convince the regime to change its destructive behavior,” Pompeo tweeted. “Iran’s regime has a choice: change its behavior and act like a normal country or watch the escalating pressure continue.”
In this case, “relentless pressure” and “escalating pressure” would seem to be an acknowledgment that they have not yet reached maximum pressure.
To confuse matters, Mnuchin, meanwhile, initially said in a press conference, “This is part of a maximum unprecedented economic pressure campaign the United States is waging against the world’s largest state sponsor of terror.” Then he said, “The maximum pressure exerted by the United States is only going to mount from here.” But how does that make any sense? Pressure can mount only up until the point at which it reaches the maximum. So either Mnuchin is signaling he thinks they’ve reached maximum pressure, or that they’ll continue to increase sanctions until they’ve reached maximum. Got that?
The ambiguity in such statements only makes it clear that in the coming weeks and months, it will be incumbent on those in the policy community and within Congress who support a firm line on Iran to emphasize both publicly and in private meetings with the administration that they do not consider the current level of sanctions to represent “maximum pressure.” They need to keep up their own pressure campaign to demand that Trump follow through with full sanctions and kill the Iran deal once and for all.
