Former officials and experts are urging the Trump administration to fully enforce a powerful set of sanctions against Iran’s financial institutions this November—or suffer the consequences of a weakened pressure campaign against Tehran.
The letter to the White House, circulated Monday and signed by 30 foreign policy experts and civil servants, comes just ahead of a November deadline to reimpose sanctions related to Iranian banks. The sanctions place serious pressure on SWIFT, the global financial messaging service that facilitates cross-border money transfers, to once again bar Iranian banks from its ranks.
Some in the administration are reportedly resistant to exposing SWIFT to that kind of pressure. But the Monday letter argues that it is necessary to ensure SWIFT disconnects Iran—an expulsion the signatories describe as indispensable to an effective sanctions regime.
“Failure to achieve the disconnection of such banks from the SWIFT financial messaging system would fall short of President Trump’s stated goal of imposing maximum pressure on the Islamic Republic and would make it easier for the regime to endure the re-imposition of U.S. sanctions,” write the officials and experts, who include Elliott Abrams, Michael Doran, Joe Lieberman, Mark Dubowitz, Jamie Fly, Mary Beth Long, and others.
SWIFT itself barred Iran in 2012 under the threat of congressional sanctions. “The Trump administration must demonstrate its willingness to enforce sanctions targeting SWIFT’s board and compel the service to act on its own accord—just as it did last year when SWIFT disconnected North Korean banks,” the letter reads.
Disconnecting a country from SWIFT is broadly seen as “one of the most serious financial sanctions possible.” In the case of Iran, it contributed significantly to economic pressure against the country ahead of the 2015 nuclear deal. Tehran was reconnected to SWIFT in 2016. Since leaving the deal in May, the Trump administration has been steadily re-applying economic penalties against Iran. European parties to the deal, meanwhile, are committed to staying in the deal.
Sanctions against SWIFT “would not interrupt” the service’s operations or “harm U.S. financial institutions that rely on” it, the letter says. Rather, the penalties could target SWIFT officials. The Monday letter also responds to a range of past objections to SWIFT sanctions, including that the penalties will hurt efforts to track illicit financing or that they will drive China and Russia to create a SWIFT alternative.
“These warnings proved false,” they write. “Given the close working relationship between SWIFT and career U.S. officials, we are not surprised to learn that these warnings are being recycled—used this time to deter President Trump from exercising his authority under the law.”
At the least, the letter concludes, the president must impose all sanctions against Iran that were in place before the nuclear deal. “That includes the disconnection of the Central Bank of Iran and designated Iranian financial institutions from SWIFT.”
