Treasury Undersecretary Adam Szubin, speaking today at a conference in Washington, warned Congress against imposing new sanctions on Iran over their conventional ballistic missile tests, warning in particular against overuse of sanctions.
The Obama Administration has struggled with its narrative on Iran’s missile tests, initially claiming they weren’t a violation of the P5+1 nuclear deal, then insisting they were, and pushing for international condemnation of the effort.
As far as sanctions go, however, Szubin warned they would “needlessly risk undermining our unity with international partners,” because the rest of the international community has no intention of going along with the sanctions.
Szubin’s comments reflect a previous speech by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, who also warned the US was overusing sanctions, too quick to impose new sanctions and too unwilling to ease them, saying it was undermining US credibility.
The goal is regime change.
For the life of me, I can’t understand why Washington continues
down this dead end road.
There are very few areas where the US has exclusive technology to sell. Even where the US has the best technology, there are competitors with near equivalent or “good enough” alternative solutions. For many uses, an IPhone 4 is just as good as the very latest product.
Oil extraction is an example of US leadership in technology but since both Russia and Iran are denied this commercial technology, they will develop their own. Both countries have the domestic research and engineering skills.
Sanctions, and the threat of sanctions, create competitors to American companies and deny Americans jobs and investment.
Russia and China are the primary beneficiaries of US sanctions. Of course this doesn’t matter to Congress because they don’t work for a living.