Trump Announces ‘Hard-Hitting’ New Sanctions

Russia Vows to Support Iran Along With Partners

Date: 24 June 2019 - 21:57

News ID: ۶۷۳۹۱

MOSCOW (Dispatches) - Russia and its partners will take steps to counter new sanctions that Washington has said it will impose on Iran, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies on Monday.
In the comments reported by TASS and RIA, Ryabkov did not specify what those steps would be. He said the imposition of U.S. sanctions would aggravate tensions, and Washington should instead be seeking dialogue with Tehran.
It’s a "deliberate escalation of the whole situation”, Ryabkov said. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said new sanctions imposed by the United States on Iran are illegal.
His remarks come as the U.S. and the occupying regime of Israel are working to convince Russia to join them in confronting Iran during an unusual gathering of the three sides’ security advisers this week.
According to media reports, both Washington and Tel Aviv would be trying to use the gathering in Occupied Palestine as an opportunity to turn Russia against Iran.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose country is a close ally of Tehran, denied that the U.S. could secure concessions on key issues.
"I don’t think anyone is trying to steamroll us on anything – they must understand that is a far-fetched possibility. But we do need the dialogue,” he told Russian channel NTV.
President Trump signed off on an order leveling new sanctions against Iran. Trump, calling reporters into the Oval Office Monday morning, described the sanctions order as "hard hitting" and said they will deny Iran access to financial instruments.
"We do not seek conflict with Iran or any other country," Trump told reporters.
"We will continue to increase pressure on Tehran,” Trump said as he sat at his desk in the Oval Office preparing to sign an executive order.
The Trump administration already moved this spring to cut off all revenues from Iranian oil exports, the lifeblood of the nation’s economy, and the new sanctions are expected to be aimed at shutting down additional sources of income "with the goal of forcing political change in Tehran”, the New York Times said.
Trump and his top foreign policy aides are gambling that continuing the squeeze on Iran will compel it to buckle to demands to limit their nuclear program in ways that go beyond the landmark agreement that major world powers forged with Iran in 2015 — and that Trump withdrew from last year, the paper said.
Iran says the Trump administration is waging economic warfare on its nation. The Trump administration has imposed more than 1,000 specific sanctions on Iran since the withdrawal from the nuclear agreement in May 2018, according to the State Department.
The rollout of sanctions and attempt to end all oil exports, along with an insistence by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that Tehran meet 12 expansive demands mostly unrelated to the nuclear program, "set a spark to the escalatory cycle we’re seeing today,” said Dalia Dassa Kaye, a Middle East expert at RAND Corporation, a research group in California.
Trump is threatening Iran with additional sanctions, but there’s not much left for the U.S. to target because most of the Islamic Republic’s economy has been hit  by earlier penalties, Bloomberg wrote on Monday.
The U.S. is already sanctioning significant sectors including oil, banks and steel, leaving smaller targets including certain exports and government officials. Trump could also hit Iran’s central bank with secondary sanctions, at the risk of hurting humanitarian trade, it said.
More than 80% of Iran’s economy is under sanction today, Pompeo said Sunday before heading to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to rally a front against Iran. The new sanctions "will be a further effort to ensure that their capacity not only to grow their economy but to evade sanctions becomes more and more difficult,” Pompeo said.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry said the new penalties won’t force the country to negotiate or capitulate.
"Are there any other sanctions left for the U.S. to impose on Iran?” ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said Monday. The Trump administration "knows full well that if pressure and sanctions were the answer, they would have yielded results much earlier.”
The U.S. has also revoked waivers that had allowed eight countries including India and China to import Iranian oil despite American sanctions.
The moves so far haven’t been enough for at least one Republican lawmaker. Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, the top GOP member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, on Sunday egged on the Trump administration’s efforts.
"We want them to be more desperate,” McCaul said on CBS’s "Face the Nation” news program. "We want them to have their economy crippled” so Iranian leaders will negotiate, he said.
But with little left to sanction, added punishments would be mostly symbolic and "risk Iran escalating in retaliation,” Harrell said.
Iranian authorities have already said new sanctions show that Trump’s call for negotiations -- repeated over the weekend -- was hollow.