Speaking Wednesday morning about the deescalation of military tensions with Iran, President Trump announced that he intends to impose “powerful new sanctions” against them “until Iran changes its behavior.”
There is no indication what the new sanctions will be, and generally speaking, Trump Administration sanctions end up being almost word-for-word repeats of sanctions already in effect, meaning they’re just reiterating penalties already imposed.
This is a consequence of several decades of sanctions against Iran, which have left every Iranian official of any note at all sanctioned long ago, and nobody with ties to Iran leaving any assets in territory where the US government could get at it.
The sanctions will likely be something for the administration to trot out before the US press as real retaliation against Iran, while Iran dismisses them as having little to no impact. This has been the general trend for such sanctions for years, and while it will be presented as retaliation for Iranian strikes, the US could just as well have imposed more toothless sanctions at any time on any pretext.
Trump Claims US Imposing ‘Powerful’ New Sanctions on Iran
Says sanctions will continue until Iran changes its behavior
Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.
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