Not enforcing With Ryan King
PRESIDENT Biden has spent his three years in office making it clear to Tehran’s terrorist regime that America won’t make it pay a price for attacking our allies, bankrolling Hamas and expanding Iranian nuclear capabilities.
By refusing to enforce sanctions already on the books, Biden is helping Iran foot the bill for its aggression, including the first direct attack on Israel in the regime’s 45 years in power.
Since Biden took office, Iran has steadily increased oil exports — its most lucrative revenue source — following a historic collapse of sales during the Trump administration’s maximum-pressure campaign.
The increase is no accident. “U.S. officials privately acknowledge they’ve gradually relaxed some enforcement of sanctions on Iranian oil sales,” Bloomberg revealed last year.
This month, Iran boosted oil production to an estimated five-year high of 3.4 million barrels per day — primarily for China, which buys the commodity at a discount. From oil alone, the regime has earned upward of $100 billion, and a handy cushion from the consequences of its actions.
Another source of revenue is liquified petroleum gas, which Tehran has started to export in record quantities, making it the top seller in the region.
In public, the White House denies it is going easy on Iran. Accordingly,
sanctions it should be enforcing are still on the books.
It has also left in place Executive Order 13846, issued by Donald Trump, which provides a toolkit to penalize anyone involved in the “sale, transport, or marketing” of regime petroleum.
So why isn’t the administration acting? In a word: appeasement.
Team Biden believes dogmatically that they can keep the Middle
East quiet by paying Iran.
The Oct. 7 massacre proved otherwise — Hamas depends on Tehran’s reliable provision of funding, training and weapons.
This flawed ideology has led Washington to pull its punches across a spectrum of threats: an advancing nuclear program; Hezbollah and other Iran-backed militias; the Houthis’ attacks on global shipping; and the arming of Russia with missiles and drones for use against Ukraine.
During Biden’s term, according to National Union for Democracy in Iran data, trendlines for Tehran’s oil exports, military expenditures and nuclear advances surged compared with during the height of Trump sanctions from 2018 to 2020.
The implication is clear: US sanctions deprive Iran of resources. The regime then must calibrate its provocations against potential economic ramifications.
Serious on sanctions
Biden can still get serious about penalizing Iran, but he must dramatically increase sanctions on the shippers, insurers, middlemen and “dark-fleet” tankers involved in the petroleum trade.
But the most important action is sanctioning the Chinese and Asian financial institutions that facilitate Tehran’s illicit trade.
It should be clear, after the weekend’s attack, that the consequences of appeasement of Iran are a matter of life and death.
Washington must rectify its failed Iran policy and curb Tehran’s funding sources before the conflict spins out of control.
Andrea Stricker (@StrickerNonpro) is a research fellow and deputy director of the Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.