On the day that news broke of CIA operatives captured and perhaps executed in Iran and Lebanon, the United Kingdom announced sanctions on the Iranian central bank that President Obama is not imitating, although calls for such a bank sanction have come from the Republican presidential field.
“The [British] Government has imposed a direction under Schedule 7 to the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 requiring UK credit and financial institutions to cease all business with banks incorporated in Iran and their branches and subsidiaries,” Her Majesty’s Treasury announced today. “This is the first time that the UK has used these powers to cut an entire country’s banking sector off from our financial sector,” Treasury added in a statement, and explained that “all UK credit and financial institutions are required to cease business relationships and transactions with all Iranian banks, including the Central Bank of Iran, and their branches and subsidiaries.”
French President Nicolas Sarkozy “called on the EU, US, Japan and Canada to take the more substantial step of freezing Iranian central bank assets held overseas,” according to the Financial Times. The new sanctions were prompted by the recent UN report that Iran’s efforts to obtain nuclear weapons.
The United States is also announcing new sanctions, but none as apparently forceful as those promulgated by the UK and proposed by the French.
Asked today why the United States is only sanctioning certain corporations rather than the Central Bank, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney demurred. “”We are, as we said we would do, increasing sanctions [and] ratcheting up pressure on Iran, and we continue to look at all options going forward,” Carney said during the press briefing. “We are in the place with Iran — the isolation tat it feels and the pressure that it feels — because of leadership from here by this president and this administration working unilaterally and together with our allies around the globe, including the UK.”
Carney added that, “specifically, with regards to the Central Bank, we continue to look at all options and will consult with Congress on that.”
Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, has made sanctioning the Iranian Central Bank a favorite foreign policy plank during his presidential campaign. “This country can sanction the Iranian central bank right now and shut down that country’s economy. And that’s what this president needs to do, and the American people need to stand up and force him to make that stand today,” Perry said during the CBS/National Journal debate on foreign policy.
