'Sanctions relief' started in June
One way Obama has pressured Iran is through isolating the country’s banks from the global financial sector, the networks that make modern international commerce possible. This in turn has led Iran to seek out front companies and cutouts to conduct routine international business, such as selling its crude oil.
In this cat and mouse game, the Treasury Department in recent years has routinely designated new entities as violators of sanctions, forcing Iran to adjust in turn. In the six weeks prior to the Iranian elections in June, the Treasury Department issued seven notices of designations of sanctions violators that included more than 100 new people, companies, aircraft, and sea vessels.
Since June 14, however, when Rouhani was elected, the Treasury Department has only issued two designation notices that have identified six people and four companies as violating the Iran sanctions.
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“Before the election there were a lot of these designations,” said Trita Parsi, the executive director of the National Iranian American Council, a group that has advocated for ending sanctions on Iran since. “Their impact was probably not decisive, but it was a way for the White House to signal to the Iranians and Congress they were going forward with the sanctions train.” Parsi continued: “After the election [the Obama administration] wanted to give the opposite signal, a pause. The last thing you would want to do is let the sanctions train go forward and potentially scuttle an opportunity that could have been there.”
Following the Iranian elections, there were also a lot of changes inside the Iranian government, making the task of designating officials and entities a bit more tricky, Parsi said. But a significant part of the administration’s decision, in Parsi’s opinion, was the belief that continuing a high pace of designations would “undermine the signal that they were trying to send, that there was an opening.”
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By Dubowitz’s estimates, Iran is now selling between 150,000 and 200,000 barrels of oil per day on the black market, meaning that Iran has profited from the illicit sale of over 35 million barrels of oil since Rouhani took office, with little additional measures taken by the United States to counter it.Jonathan Tobin adds (Hat Tip: Stephen D):
By acting in this manner, the U.S. was already telegraphing to the Iranians that they were in the process of backing away from a determination to press them hard in order to secure the end of Iran’s nuclear program, as the president pledged last year in the presidential debates. While the administration and its apologists will defend this as a necessary move in order to entice the Iranians to the table, what this does is make it clear to Rouhani’s boss, Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that he has nothing to fear from the Americans. After more than a decade of diplomatic deception, the Iranians finally have what they wanted: an American president and secretary of state ready to recognize their “right” to enrich uranium and to hold on to to their nuclear fuel stockpile and to loosen sanctions in exchange for easily evaded promises. The next stop is not, as the administration may hope, a deal in six months to end the nuclear threat, but an Iran that knows that the sanctions have already begun to unravel emboldened to dig in its heels even further.
Like the clandestine manner with which the administration has already weakened the existing sanctions, this deal breaks a promise the president made to the American people as well as to our allies. All Americans as well as Israelis and moderate Arabs worried about the Iranian threat have to hold on to now are more of Obama’s promises. But with a presidential credibility gap that is currently as big as the Grand Canyon, anyone who takes him at his word without a look at the fine print is making a colossal error.Indeed. But it should be clear by now to all that for this administration, promises are made to be broken.
Labels: Ayatollah Ali Khameni, Barack Hussein Obama, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:27 PM
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