Washington approves sanctions against 18 Iranian banks

Washington: On Thursday, the United States approved sanctions against 18 major Iranian banks, a blow to Iran’s financial sector, which faces significant challenges under the US policy of “maximum pressure.”

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement that the sanctions “demonstrate our commitment to stop illegal access to US dollars.” “Our sanctions will continue until Iran stops supporting terrorist activities and ends its nuclear programs,” he added.

This move, which has fueled anti-Iranian hawks in President Donald Trump’s administration, weeks before the US presidential election, is expected to isolate the Iranian financial sector from the rest of the world.

Behnam Bin Talib of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which seeks to take a hard line against Iran, said that “there are still many points of contact between the Iranian financial sector and the international financial system” and it is time to cut them.

“These sanctions are also evidence that there are still targets that can be achieved to increase the economic pressure on Tehran,” he added in a statement to Agence France-Presse.

Many observers, as well as European diplomats, fear that this will reduce Iran’s ability to obtain goods deemed “humanitarian” (medicine and food), despite the US Treasury Department’s claim that these materials are subject to exemptions.

“In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the American system is seeking to destroy our last channels to pay (for) food and medicine,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Twitter.

“Iranians will overcome this brutality. But conspiring to starve a people is a crime against humanity,” he added.

Papara Salvin of the “Atlantic Council” said: “These sanctions are sadistic and encapsulated in foreign policy.” “It will not subdue the Iranian government, it will weaken ordinary people, strengthen the black market and, in the long run, undermine sanctions around the dollar,” he added.

In 2018, the United States unilaterally withdrew from the international nuclear deal with Iran, as Trump deemed it insufficient to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear bomb and to end its “destabilizing” behavior in the Middle East. It reimposed all the US sanctions that were lifted in 2015 while tightening them.

These punitive measures are tightening the screws in the Iranian economy because they are accompanied by so-called “secondary” sanctions: any country or company that continues to trade with Iran runs the risk of being prevented from accessing the US financial sector and market.

The Trump administration had announced its goal of weakening the Islamic Republic until it “changed its position” in the region and negotiated a “better deal.” But as the Republican billionaire’s first term approaches the end of the billionaire’s first term, the Trump administration has made no headway on either front.