US Moves to Heavily Regulate Humanitarian Aid Into Iran

In a move that the Treasury Department said would ease the shipment of food and medicine into Iran for humanitarian reasons, the Trump Administration has announced a move to establish a system of “permissible trade.”

There was never any legal basis for restricting humanitarian aid under US law, though US hostility toward any shipment of anything to Iran made it de facto all but impossible, and banking statements scared many away from even trying.

Statements from NGOs were quick to criticize the effort, saying that far from clearing the way to allow such aid shipments, the US was likely making it even harder to accomplish with new regulations from the Treasury Department.

To send aid to Iran, the Treasury Department will demand institutions submit “substantial and unprecedented” information, all invoices and details of all customers, and whether any of them were on US, EU, or UN blacklists.

This is enough of a hassle that some analysts are predicting that there will be “not a single banker in the world” willing to accept these new conditions, and subsequently it will have a chilling effect on aid.