U.S. weighs Iran sanctions, boosts Hezbollah pressure
Tehran ally targeted as Trump eyes nuke accord deadlines.
The Trump administration moved to ratchet up pressure Thursday on Iran as the president faces a series of deadlines for decisions on sanctions underpinning the 2015 nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic.
The Justice Department said it will establish a “financing and narcoterrorism” team to target Iran’s ally Hezbollah, which the U.S. considers a terrorist organization. Later in the day, President Donald Trump was scheduled to meet with his national security team before the first deadlines on Iran sanctions come today.
While the president plans to extend waivers on sanctions against Iran that were suspended under the nuclear deal, he is also preparing new sanctions targeting Iran for ballistic missile, human rights and cyber violations. Those moves are intended to increase pressure without abrogating the nuclear accord that Iran reached with the U.S. and five other world powers, according to two administration officials.
Measures to isolate and pressure Iran partly “by spotlighting human rights abuses, corruption, support to terrorism and militant proxies, progress on their ballistic missile program, which is still subject to UN sanctions — all of that can be undertaken right away,” Juan Zarate, a former assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes at the Treasury Department, said during a congressional hearing Wednesday.
Trump was expected to make a final decision Thursday, according to a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Justice Department move seemed aimed at boosting resources for a program known as Project Cassandra, targeting Hezbollah’s drug trafficking and related operations. In that sense, it would be similar to administration efforts to disrupt financing flows, even relatively minor ones, that benefit North Korea’s government, which is also heavily sanctioned by the U.S.
“The team will initiate prosecutions that will restrict the flow of money to foreign terrorist organizations as well as disrupt violent international drug trafficking operations,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement.
Nuclear-related sanctions that were waived under the 2015 deal stem from four separate pieces of legislation. Those laws all grant the president the power to waive the restrictions but set different timetables for how frequently he must do so. Those deadlines all fall due in the next several days.
Trump must officially decide by today whether to continue relief from sanctions that cut off Iran’s central bank from the global financial system. Waiving those restrictions was required under the agreement that Iran reached with world powers in exchange for curbing its nuclear program, and reimposing them would effectively scuttle the deal.
The administration officials, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations, both stressed that no final decision had been made and said the president’s plans could change at any time.
The administration vocally supported street protests this month by Iranians against economic mismanagement and the political system, which led to at least 20 deaths and about 1,000 arrests. Trump’s United Nations envoy, Nikki Haley, called an emergency session of the Security Council last week to discuss the demonstrations, and the president has praised the bravery of Iranians in the streets “as they try to take back their corrupt government.”
Trump has also continued to rail against the nuclear accord, calling it the “worst deal ever.” In October, in a measure required every 90 days under U.S. law, Trump declined to certify that the agreement was in U.S. national security interests.