November 10, 2017
As if to prove that the new law authorizing sanctions on people and entities helping the Pasdaran engage in terrorism are hollow, the US Treasury Department last week sanctioned 12 men and 29 entities for their assistance to the Pasdaran’s terrorism efforts. Every one of those 41 had already been sanctioned. Some had previously been sanctioned for human rights violations. Most had been sanctioned before for work on Iran’s missile program. A few had been sanctioned before for both reasons.
But they were all already under sanctions, so the new designations announced last Tuesday really didn’t amount to much more than a political echo.
Nonetheless, the Trump Administration was able to tout that it was being much tougher on Iran than the weak Obama Administration.
The daily Kayhan did its best to help the Trump Administration look tough. In a long story the day after the sanctions list was published, Kayhan saw a true horror on the horizon.
Kayhan said the new sanctions have “many economic consequences for the system. Accordingly, it can be said that the condition of the banking relationships is not going to go back to the situation that existed before the nuclear agreement, but rather to a much worse situation.”
It said the worst impact would result from the sanctioning of the Pasdaran itself for terrorism. But the organization had already been sanctioned three times before by the Obama and Bush II Administrations for missile work and human rights violations. The new sanctions simply duplicate the old sanctions.
They freeze any assets found in the United States, bar Americans from doing business with person or organizations sanctioned and forbid the issuance of US visas to any of the people sanctioned. But you can only freeze assets, block all business and forbid visa issuance once.
