January 10, 2020
Richard Nephew, who worked on Iran sanctions for the Obama Administration, says there really isn’t much more the Trump Administration can do to squeeze Iran with the additional sanctions that it announces every few days.
“There are few sanctions that could yet be imposed on Iran that would have the power of the measures already imposed,” he said in an interview with Iran’s Mehr news agency that was published December 16.
The US Treasury Department announces new sanctions on average every few days. Most of these are sanctions are on individual Iranian citizens and businesses or state agencies. In many cases there are sanctions imposed for, say, terrorism on persons already sanctioned for, say, nuclear activity. The new sanctions impose no new restrictions, however, merely duplicating the restrictions already imposed.
While the Islamic Republic has complained bitterly about the sanctions imposed some weeks ago on the Central Bank, Nephew said he didn’t see how the new sanctions would constrict trade any more than those sanctions already imposed on the Central Bank.
He said sanctions recently imposed on the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line (IRISL) would, however, cause some pain for the shipper because the old sanctions did not preclude foreign business with IRISL while the new ones do.
But Iran has complained bitterly about the IRISL sanctions because the new sanctions bar IRISL from carrying medicines and foodstuffs. Nephew, however, said that didn’t mean anything in reality because there are other shippers perfectly able to carry such goods.
Nephew is now a fellow at the Center on Global Policy at Columbia University in New York City.
He was asked about the new sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank, which the media in the Islamic Republic have complained about very loudly as very damaging. Nephew said:
“I do not believe that this decision has made any real difference in Iranian trade, though this is because the existing sanctions were already sufficiently severe as to preclude much of it. This is a difficulty that the United States will soon have, as there are few ‘new’ sectors, entities or individuals to sanction that have not already been sanctioned or affected by other measures already in place.”
He was then asked about the sanctions on IRISL, and responded:
“This measure will potentially have a meaningful effect. Previously, IRISL was sanctioned but only as an element of the Iranian government. The sanctions did not preclude foreign business with IRISL. Now, the sanctions will create real costs for foreign entities or individuals who do business with it, essentially recreating the situation that existed for IRISL prior to the JCPOA.”
As for the bar on the ships carrying food and medicines, he said, “Ultimately, I suspect that this measure will have less impact on Iranian humanitarian trade than could be anticipated, simply because there are other cargo carriers that will be prepared to operate in and with Iran. But, there are many fewer of them today than in the past.
“To address the immediate humanitarian risks, the United States has permitted transactions to ‘wind down’ with IRISL for six months. This is an unusual situation and reflects a sense in the US government that taking precipitous action here could be damaging, if not to humanitarian trade than to the narrative that the United States is not trying to deny such trade.”
