The Trump administration’s emerging strategy for confronting Iranian threats appears to be upholding the nuclear deal while sanctioning Iran’s non-nuclear behavior, two experts on the agreement wrote Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal.
Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and David Albright, a former weapons inspector and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, noted that even as President Donald Trump waived United States sanctions against Iranian crude oil exports, his administration slapped new sanctions against the regime. Dubowitz and Albright characterized the strategy the “waive-and-slap approach.”
Until the Trump administration develops a comprehensive plan for confronting nuclear and non-nuclear Iranian threats, it is better not to “make drastic and premature decisions that could incite a diplomatic backlash,” they said.
Signing the waiver doesn’t constitute a reversal of Trump’s critique of the nuclear deal, but marks a cautious approach as the administration conducts a review of its policies vis-à-vis Iran.
Calling this approach “elegant,” Dubowitz and Albright wrote:
While waiving oil sanctions for a further 120 days, on Wednesday the U.S. Treasury Department applied sanctions to a further four entities and three individuals from Iran and China for activities relating to the regime’s ballistic-missile program. It’s a clear message to foreign banks and companies looking to do business with Iran: You will be taking significant risks if you deal with a country still covered by a web of expanding nonnuclear sanctions.
In addition to sanctions targeting Iran’s ballistic missile program, the Trump administration on Tuesday sanctioned Rami Makhluf, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The new Syria-related sanctions came shortly after the administration publicized charges that the Assad regime had built a crematorium in a prison to dispose of the remains of executed inmates.
In just four months, Dubowitz and Albright observed, the Trump administration imposed 281 sanctions against Syrian entities and individuals. In the previous 16 years, under its two predecessors, 317 entities and individuals in Syria were targeted with sanctions.
Furthermore, last month the administration targeted two Iranians for human rights violations, including Sohrab Soleimani, brother of Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force.
In a letter to Congress accompanying the decision to issue a waiver for oil sanctions, Trump wrote that his administration would “not to be deterred in confronting the Iranian regime.”
While the terms of the deal will require that Trump issue more waivers and certify Iran’s compliance, he is also expected to continue targeting Iranian individuals and entities involved in “missile, illicit financing and terrorist activities.”
Moreover, while Iran may not be in material breach of the nuclear deal, it “has been exploiting many loopholes in the deal that border on violations or otherwise have a negative impact on U.S. national security,” Dubowitz and Albright observed. “It’s important to remember that the Iranian regime cheats incrementally, not egregiously, but that the sum total of that incremental cheating is eventually egregious.”
Given both the complications in nixing the deal and the ongoing threats from Iran, Dubowitz and Albright wrote, “the Trump administration is wise to hold off on making big moves until it has devised a full strategy to confront this broader threat. Until then, waive and slap should become the norm for the foreseeable future.”
Former members of the Obama administration have recently formed an organization to fight the imposition of non-nuclear sanctions on Iran. One of the members of the group’s advisory council is former Secretary of State John Kerry, who assured the Senate in 2015 that the deal won’t stop the U.S. from imposing non-nuclear sanctions on Iran.
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