Trump threatens allies that trade with Iran
Allies stand up to President Trump as he claims that his hard-line sanctions will help to win ‘world peace’
Donald Trump has threatened to stop doing business with any country that trades with Iran. The US president claimed yesterday that his hard-line stance would help to secure “world peace”. However, senior British government ministers have pledged to stand up to the US.
DONALD TRUMP has threatened to stop doing business with any country that trades with Iran as a war of words over his new sanctions escalated. The US president claimed yesterday that his hard-line stance on the regime was adopted to help secure “world peace” as he doubled down on his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.
However, senior British government ministers vowed to stand up to the US and urged Washington to start talking with allies about a new strategy.
The first wave of economic sanctions kicked in at one minute past midnight on Monday night. A second set will come into effect in early November. It marks a critical phase in the fate of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Iran will only remain in the agreement if it continues to bring economic benefits, but America is determined to punish the regime financially.
The deal waived sanctions in return for Iran curbing its nuclear programme. The other signatories – Britain, Germany, France, the European Union, Russia and China – remain committed.
Federica Mogherini, the EU’S foreign policy chief, said yesterday that it was encouraging enterprises to increase business with Iran because it had been compliant with its nuclear-related commitments. During a trip to Wellington, New Zealand, she said it was up to Europeans to decide who they want to trade with.
Mr Trump and his advisers, who refer to Iran as “the world’s largest state sponsor of terror”, believe economic pressure can bring the country’s leaders to the negotiating table. They want a deal that curbs Iran’s ballistic missile programme and involvement in Middle East conflicts as well as its nuclear ambitions.
There are signs that Iran’s economy is feeling the effects. This week the Central Bank of Iran responded to the plummeting value of the rial, Iran’s currency, by giving out subsidised hard currency for trading in basic commodities and pharmaceuticals. Protesters have taken to the streets in recent months, calling for the fall of the Iranian establishment.
Mr Trump’s officials backed the protesters on Monday – though fell short of supporting regime change. Mr Trump tweeted yesterday: “Anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States. I am asking for WORLD PEACE, nothing less!”
Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, wrote on Twitter : “Tantrums & CAPPED TWEETS won’t change the fact that the world is sick & tired of US unilateralism. Stopping US trade and killing 100K US jobs is fine with us, but the world won’t follow impulsive tweeted diktats. Just ask EU, Russia, China & dozens of our other trading partners.”
Alistair Burt, the Middle East minister, was asked on BBC Radio Four’s Today if the UK would stand up to Mr Trump over the Iran deal. He said: “As far as a disagreement with President Trump on this is concerned, they can certainly expect the UK to do this.”
There is a popular saying in the Middle East that, while the Iranians may not have won a war in two thousand years, they have certainly won every negotiation. That view might require a degree of revision following Iran’s recent success on the battlefield in saving the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-assad.
There can, though, be no disputing the supremacy of Iran’s negotiating skills, particularly when it comes to the contentious issue of its nuclear programme. Is there another country that could persuade six leading world powers to commit themselves to tortuous nuclear disarmament negotiations with a regime that has never actually managed to build a nuclear weapon?
Tehran would still be benefitting from the highly advantageous deal it struck with US president Barack Obama and other global powers in 2015 had it kept to the spirit of the agreement, whereby the ayatollahs engaged in a more constructive approach towards the outside world.
Instead it has been business as usual for the hardliners around ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the divinely appointed Supreme Leader, who actually controls the country, in contrast to the so-called democratically elected government of President Hassan Rouhani. Rather than use the agreement to improve Iran’s standing in the world, as well as the economic fortunes of its beleaguered citizens, the regime has embarked on a disruptive romp through the Arab world, using its malign influence to destabilise any regime deemed friendly towards the West.
It is this reason, rather than any technical deficiencies concerning the deal itself, that has led the Trump administration’s entire security establishment to voice their unanimous support of their president’s uncompromising decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal, and hit Tehran with a new wave of sanctions.
The likes of Defence Secretary James Mattis, who served as a frontline commander in Iraq with the US Marine Corps, know only too well the extent of Iranian meddling from his experience of seeing Iranian-backed militias killing and maiming his troops.
Indeed, the full extent of Iranian duplicity in that ill-fated conflict is only now starting to come to light. The New York Times recently revealed the US Justice Department is investigating claims that several major Westernowned drug companies did business in Iraq during the war in the knowledge that medicines donated to the Iraniancontrolled government in Baghdad were then sold on the black market to finance attacks on American troops.
The operation is said to have been run by Muqtada al-sadr, the Iranian-backed Shi’ite leader of the Mahdi Army whose supporters then controlled the Iraqi health ministry. The firms alleged to have been involved in this outrageous scam include the British-based Astrazeneca, which has confirmed that it has “received an inquiry from the US Department of Justice in connection with an anticorruption investigation relating to activities in Iraq”.
Hopefully, the new sanctions imposed by the Trump administration will help to protect foreign multinationals against further acts of Iranian deviousness, as well as sending a strong signal to Tehran that Washington is no longer prepared to tolerate its latent hostility towards the West.
Moreover, if recent experience is anything to go by, hitting Iran with sanctions actually works. The main reason Mr Rouhani agreed to enter talks on Iran’s nuclear programme in the first place was his desperation to allow his country some respite from the punitive sanctions that had been imposed in retaliation for decades of non-compliance with its international nuclear obligations.
Now Iran seems set to suffer yet further hardship as a consequence of the new round of measures imposed by the Trump administration.
The rial has already suffered a calamitous decline in anticipation of them, prompting the largest antiregime protests since the 2009 Green Revolution.
The internal political pressure on Mr Khamenei to change tack will only intensify as Washington ramps up the sanctions, with Iran’s vital oil exports set to be targeted in November.
Applying intense economic pressure to make Tehran mend its ways is certainly a better option than military confrontation, a point the new Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, would be well advised to take on board before he becomes too heavily invested in Europe’s anti-sanctions lobby.
Like Boris Johnson before him, Mr Hunt seems to have succumbed to the ludicrous Foreign Office proposition, frequently aired by Sir Richard Dalton, the former British ambassador to Tehran, that the only way to change Iran’s conduct is through diplomatic dialogue.
Complete tosh, as Mr Johnson might say. The West has tried diplomacy with Iran for nearly 40 years, and achieved the square root of very little. Imposing sanctions, by contrast, has delivered quantifiable results, such as the 2015 nuclear deal. And if they worked then, there is no reason why they cannot deliver now.