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New Iran Sanctions Leave Room for Additional Economic Pressure
(Foundation for Defense of Democracies) Annie Fixler and Zachary Jutcovich - With the re-imposition of U.S. sanctions on Iran last week, the Treasury Department designated 706 entities, individuals, aircraft, and vessels for their role in a "broad range of malign activities" - an important step in dialing up the pressure on the Iranian regime. Two-thirds of these designations represent a re-listing of targets removed from Treasury's sanctions lists as part of the 2015 nuclear deal. Many of the 219 first-time designees are components of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's business empire, subsidiaries of financial institutions that support the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and companies and individuals responsible for Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The U.S. has now re-imposed sanctions on nearly 60% of the entities and individuals that received sanctions relief under the Iran nuclear deal. The remaining 182 could potentially represent the core of the next set of sanctions targets. National Security Advisor John Bolton noted that this is just the beginning of the administration's economic pressure. There will be "sanctions that even go beyond" what had been introduced. Annie Fixler is a Policy Analyst and Zachary Jutcovich is Congressional Relations Manager at FDD.