Trump Administration Prepares Broad New Iran Sanctions

Sanctions meant to cut last bit of legal financial exchange

The exact wording is still being worked on, but the Trump Administration is preparing to introduce a new round of sanctions against Iran in general, and its financial sector in particular. The goal an executive order from Trump imposing these before the election.

Again, how it works isn’t yet confirmed, but the idea is to prevent every last avenue of legal financial exchange for Iran. Since this is already effectively the case with existing sanctions, the changes are likely to be minor.

These new restrictions will be presented as closing “loopholes,” and some officials are saying that the real goal is to prevent Joe Biden, if he wins the election, from easily reversing the sanctions and returning the US to the nuclear deal.

Right now, the US has blacklisted more or less all of Iran’s international banks, and this will add the country’s last 14 banks to the blacklist. The sanctions will also target money-changers and hawala transfer systems. Anywhere money changes hands, the US will try to stop it.

Author: Jason Ditz

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.