US Threatens New Sanctions on Iran

The Iranian regime has reacted angrily to threats by the Obama administration last week to impose new sanctions targeting individuals and companies connected to its ballistic missile program. The US is accusing Iran of carrying out two ballistic missile tests– in October and November– in breach of a UN Security Council resolution banning Iran’s development of such weapons systems.

Washington’s threat is particularly provocative as it came just days after Tehran fulfilled a key aspect of the nuclear agreement reached last July between Iran and the P5+1 group that includes the US, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany. A Russian ship left Iran last Monday carrying virtually all country’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium and thus greatly lengthening the time that would be needed to manufacture enough highly enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon. Tehran has repeatedly denied that it has any plans to build a nuclear weapon.

In return for the shipment, Iran will receive an equivalent amount of natural uranium from Kazakhstan that has not been enriched. However, Iran’s main payoff for giving up its enriched uranium is meant be the first steps to lifting the punitive sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy, possibly this month. These would include the release of about $100 billion in frozen assets, limitations on the sale of Iranian oil and allowing Iran to operate freely in the world financial system.

Last Wednesday, the Obama administration circulated a draft of proposed new sanctions targeting companies and individuals in Iran as well as Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates. The sanctions would ban US or foreign nationals from conducting business with the blacklisted firms and American banks would be compelled to freeze the assets of the companies and individuals.

The following day Iranian President Hassan Rouhani denounced the Obama administration’s “illegal intervention in Tehran’s right to boost its defensive power” and directed the defence ministry to “quickly and firmly continue with its plans to produce different missiles needed by the country’s armed forces.” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari warned the US against taking actions that were “unilateral, arbitrary and illegal.”

Rouhani is now coming under pressure from hard-line sections of the regime, particularly in the military, that have heavily criticised him for conceding too much in reaching the nuclear deal. While he is not facing an election in the near future, Rouhani is concerned that his allies will lose ground in two crucial elections next month—for the parliament and for the smaller Council of Experts that selects the country’s supreme leader.

Tehran had already expressed its opposition to a new US “anti-terror” law prohibiting citizens from 38 countries, mainly European, from travelling to the United States if they have visited Iran, Iraq, Syria or Sudan in the previous five years.

The Obama administration’s determination to maintain pressure on Tehran underscores the fact that the nuclear issue has always been a pretext for advancing the economic and strategic agenda of US imperialism in the Middle East. The threat of new sanctions, and to potentially drag out the lifting of existing measures, is aimed at extracting concessions from the Iranian regime on other issues.

Moreover, if the nuclear agreement enables the lifting of sanctions, possibly within weeks, the major beneficiaries are likely to be Washington’s rivals in Europe and Asia. Since the accord was reached last July, a stream of diplomats and corporations has headed to Tehran to sound out opportunities in preparation for the ending of key bans.

An article in Saturday’s Guardian entitled “Foreign firms dash to get in on Iran ‘gold rush’ – but US companies left out in cold” pointed out that companies from Asia and Europe were flocking to Tehran to take advantage of what is being mooted as “the world’s last great emerging economy.”

In enunciating the opposition of right-wing layers of the political establishment – Republican and Democrat, the Wall Street Journal is standing reality on its head. US imperialism has no intention of being driven out of the energy-rich region and is determined to remove all obstacles to its regional dominance by any means. While not spelt out, the logic of the editorial in rejecting Obama’s tactic for ensuring American hegemony is a further expansion of the US-led war already underway in Iraq and Syria to also target Iran.