Officials in the White House have announced plans to intensify sanctions on Tehran in the coming weeks, but that would not produce their desired result and could even be counterproductive, a political analyst said.
The United States reimposed harsh sanctions on Iran last year after unilaterally withdrawing from the 2015 international nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. It aims to step up its pressure campaign to force concessions from the Iranian government.
“By intensifying pressure, Trump seeks to compel Iran to make a major change in its behavior in accordance with US policies, but the efforts will definitely not produce such results,” Amir Ali Abolfath also said in a recent interview with the Iranian Diplomacy news website.
“This might even be counterproductive and pave the way for raising tensions between Tehran and Washington which, under the present circumstances, is more likely,” he said.
Abolfath cited the case of Venezuela as an example in which Trump has failed to achieve its purposes despite the South American country’s location in the vicinity of the US, its heavy dependence on imported goods and its highly ailing economy.
“In a country like Venezuela … the crushing American sanctions have neither led to the collapse of [President Nicolas] Maduro’s government, nor the success of the White House,” he said, adding that the same is true about North Korea that has successfully refused to surrender to the US.
“As long as the US continues its hostile stance and contemptuous approach toward Iran, the state of affairs will definitely not develop according to its wishes,” he stressed.
A senior US government official told reporters last Monday that Washington is considering additional sanctions against Iran, which would target areas of its economy that have not been hit before, Reuters reported.
“We just want a continued chilling effect,” the official said. “We want businesses to continue to think doing business with Iran is a terrible idea at this point.”
US President Donald Trump, according to the source, hopes to take the additional measures in the coming weeks around the first anniversary of the US withdrawal from JCPOA.
“The more we can do around the anniversary, the better.”
Oil Waivers
American sanctions have mainly targeted Iran’s oil export—the lifeblood of its economy.
While the US has set a goal of completely halting Iran’s oil exports, it granted temporary import waivers to China, India, Greece, Italy, Taiwan, Japan, Turkey and South Korea to ensure low oil prices and no disruption to the global oil market.
It is, however, pursuing the ultimate goal of zeroing out all purchases of Iranian crude. The Trump administration is currently in consultations with the importers and aims to reduce the number of waivers after they expire on May 2.
Brian Hook, the special US envoy for Iran, told reporters that “there are better market conditions for us to accelerate our path to zero … We are not looking to grant any waivers or exceptions to our sanctions regime.”
Abolfath said a complete halt of Iranian oil sales is not possible within a few months and Washington is making plans for at least a one-year timeframe.
“Despite the restrictions … Iran is currently exporting 1-1.4 million barrels of oil,” he said.
According to US-based analysts at Eurasia Group, China, India, Japan, South Korea and Turkey are likely to be given extended waivers and Italy, Greece and Taiwan are expected to be removed from the current list.
That could cap Iran’s crude oil exports at about 1.1 million barrels per day.
