Trump Orders Illegal Snapback of Sanctions

Zangeneh: U.S. Waging Bloodless War on Iran

Date: 21 September 2020 - 21:51

News ID: ۸۳۰۷۱

LONDON (Dispatches) -- Iranian Minister of Petroleum Bijan Zangeneh said on Monday that the United States is waging a war against Iran by imposing sanctions on various aspects of life in Iran.
"Today Iran is still fighting a war. America has waged a war against Iran with no blood,” Zanganeh was quoted as saying by the petroleum ministry’s news agency SHANA.
On Sunday, Zangeneh called on OPEC members to "denounce the use of oil as a political tool for imposition of sanctions and pressures on oil producing nations.”
The Trump administration on Monday announced new sanctions against Iran’s defense ministry and others involved in Tehran’s nuclear and weapons program.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, flanked by other top members of President Donald Trump’s national security team, also told reporters Washington had imposed new sanctions on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who has forged closer ties between Caracas and Tehran.
The new sanctions fit into Trump’s effort to limit Iran’s regional influence and come a week after U.S.-brokered deals for the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize ties with the occupying regime of Israel.
The new sanctions also put European allies, China and Russia on notice that while their inclination may be to ignore the U.S. drive to maintain the UN sanctions on Iran, companies based in their nations would feel the bite for violating them.
Asked to comment on the new U.S. sanctions, a spokesman for Iran’s mission to the United Nations dismissed them as propaganda
and said they would further isolate the United States.
"The U.S.’ ‘maximum pressure’ show, which includes new propaganda measures almost every week, has clearly failed miserably, and announcing new measures will not change this fact,” the mission’s spokesman, Alireza Miryousefi, told Reuters in an email.
"The entire world understands that these are a part of (the) next U.S. election campaign, and they are ignoring the U.S.’ preposterous claims at the UN today. It will only make (the) U.S. more isolated in world affairs,” he said.
A U.S. official confirmed Trump on Monday would issue an executive order that would allow the United States to punish those who buy or sell conventional arms to Iran with secondary sanctions, depriving them of access to the U.S. market.
The proximate cause for this U.S. action is the impending expiration of a UN arms embargo on Iran and to warn foreign actors - U.S. entities are already barred from such trade - that if they buy or sell arms to Iran they will face U.S. sanctions.
Under the 2015 nuclear deal the UN conventional arms embargo is set to expire on Oct. 18.
Other parties to the nuclear deal and most UN Security Council members have said they do not believe the United States has the right to reimpose the UN sanctions and that the U.S. move has no legal effect.
On Friday, Britain, France and Germany told the Security Council that UN sanctions relief for Iran - agreed under the 2015 nuclear deal - would continue beyond Sunday, despite Washington’s assertion.
In letters to the Security Council on Saturday, China’s UN Ambassador Zhang Jun and Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia both described the U.S. move as "illegitimate” and said the UN sanctions relief for Iran would continue.
Reuters said the new executive order will define conventional weapons broadly as any item with a potential military use, meaning it could cover such things as speed boats.
It would also apply to conventional circuit boards that can be used in ballistic missile guidance systems, it added.
The more than two dozen targets hit with sanctions on Monday include those involved in Iran’s conventional arms, nuclear and missile programs, the official said, saying some of the targets are already sanctioned under other U.S. programs.
That could prompt criticism that the U.S. move is redundant and designed for public relations purposes to look tough on Iran, a charge critics have made about past U.S. sanctions actions.
Peter Harrell, a sanctions expert at the State Department under Democratic former President Barack Obama, called the U.S. steps "a diplomatic and signaling exercise” to show Trump cared about the issue but unlikely to deter potential arms deals.
"I don’t think it’s likely to change any behavior,” he said, adding most players were likely to hold off until the Nov. 3 election to see if there is a change in U.S. administration.
The U.S. official said among Monday’s targets would be Iran’s arms organizations, about a dozen senior officials, scientists and experts from Iran’s nuclear complex, members of a procurement network that supplies goods for Iran’s missile program, and several senior officials involved in Iran’s ballistic missile program.