US slaps more sanctions on Iran
Pompeo confirms intel assessment of missile strike on jet
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump ordered new retaliatory economic sanctions Friday on Iran, even as his administration faced persistent questions over its drone strike on an Iranian general that helped ignite the latest crisis with the Islamic Republic.
Trump issued an executive order adding additional U.S. sanctions to an already long list his administration had imposed, aiming to force Iran to accept a new agreement that would curb its nuclear program and halt support for militant groups throughout the Middle East.
The president, in a statement announcing the new measures, referenced Iran’s nuclear program and use of proxy forces throughout the region while noting that the Iranians have threatened U.S. service members, diplomats and civilians — an apparent reference to his administration’s justification for killing Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike Jan. 3 in Baghdad.
“The United States will continue to counter the Iranian regime’s destructive and destabilizing behavior,” he said.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed Friday that the United States and its allies have intelligence that a Ukrainian passenger jet that crashed shortly after takeoff in Iran had been shot down.
“We do believe that it’s likely that the plane was shot down by an Iranian missile,” Pompeo said at a briefing at the White House. “We’re going to let the investigation play out before we make a final determination. It’s important that we get to the bottom of it.”
Pompeo was the highest-level official to publicly confirm the intelligence assessments. U.S. and allied officials said Thursday that they had intelligence that surface-to-air missiles fired by Iranian military forces shot down the Kyiv,
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Ukraine-bound Boeing 737 minutes after it took off from Tehran.
In Kyiv, however, Ukraine’s main intelligence agency said Friday that it had narrowed down the possible causes of the plane crash to either a missile strike or a terrorist act.
The Security Service of Ukraine said in a statement that it is unclear whether the SA-15 missile system that Western officials say likely brought down the plane was responsible.
Iran’s Fars News Agency, which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard, said Friday that Iran would issue a statement Saturday announcing the cause of the crash of the Ukrainian jetliner. The report offered no hint of what that cause might be.
Iran has maintained that there was no evidence that the plane was struck by a missile and doubled down on that assertion Friday, despite Western officials pointing to intelligence suggesting the passenger jet was accidentally hit by a missile.
Trump and his administration have faced continuing questions over its claims of an “imminent” threat as justification for killing Soleimani, setting off a furor that may not yet be contained.
Members of Congress said officials did not provide sufficient detail or justification in briefings this week.
Trump said Friday that Iran had planned to attack multiple embassies across the Middle East, including the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, after first asserting that he did not believe anyone had a right to more details on the intelligence that prompted the killing of an Iranian general.
“I can reveal that I believe it probably would’ve been four embassies,” Trump told Laura Ingraham of Fox News in an interview, without giving further information.
In a rally Thursday night in Ohio, Trump had edged closer to providing more specifics, telling his supporters that the Iranians had targeted multiple embassies — “not just the embassy in Baghdad,” he said. The information Trump gave to Fox News added detail to remarks given hours earlier by Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
In a briefing at the White House announcing the new sanctions, Pompeo said that he did not know specific details about which embassies, if any, had been targeted — only that the threats were imminent.
“I don’t know exactly which minute,” Pompeo told reporters. “We don’t know exactly which day it would’ve been executed. But it was very clear: Qassem Soleimani himself was plotting a broad, largescale attack against American interests. And those attacks were imminent.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the killing of Soleimani “provocative and disproportionate” and other members said they were unconvinced after a closed-door briefing on the intelligence.
“President Trump recklessly assassinated Qasem Soleimani,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Washington state Democrat. “He had no evidence of an imminent threat or attack.”
The new sanctions were in immediate response to Iran’s firing of a barrage of missiles at American bases in neighboring Iraq this week after to the killing of Soleimani. No one was injured. The larger U.S. goal is to force Iran to negotiate a new agreement on limiting its nuclear program.
The sanctions added Friday include measures aimed at eight Iranian officials involved in what Mnuchin called “destabilizing” activities throughout the Middle East as well as t he missile barrage Wednesday.
Those measures, which would freeze any assets the officials have in U.S. jurisdiction and prohibit financial transactions with them, are largely symbolic since such senior figures are unlikely to have assets under American control after decades of hostility between the two nations.
But other measures announced Friday could have a significant effect on strategically important sectors of the Iranian economy, said Ben Davis, chief research officer at research and data analytics firm Kharon.
Adnan Mazarei, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the sanctions will hurt an Iranian economy that was forced to cut fuel subsidies earlier this year, triggering protests, but they also will make it harder for government to negotiate with the U.S.
“This will be seen as another sign that the U.S. government cannot be taken at its word when it says it wants to negotiate,” Mazarei said.
The New York Times contributed.