US Seen as Likely to Push for Snapback Sanctions Against Iran
The U.S. and its allies should consider using additional sanctions to force Iran back to the negotiating table over its nuclear weapons program, although more sanctions also risk pushing Iran to cooperate even more closely with China, Russia and North Korea, a former Pentagon official said last week.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
Daniel Shapiro, the Defense Department’s former deputy assistant secretary for the Middle East, noted that Germany, France and the U.K. have until mid-October to decide whether to reimpose significant U.N. sanctions against Iran, part of a snapback mechanism under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Obama-era nuclear deal. The ability to impose those snapback sanctions expires Oct. 18.
Deputy State Secretary Christopher Landau said during his nomination hearing in March that he would support the snapback of those U.N. sanctions against Iran (see 2503040038).
“That's a lever that's still out there for some very significant restoration of sanctions to an already deeply damaged Iranian economy,” said Shapiro, an Atlantic Council fellow, during an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Shapiro said it’s “very questionable” whether Iran would agree to restart nuclear talks with the U.S., but those sanctions “could be leveraged to get Iran back to the table, to get Iran to provide access to the inspectors, and conceivably, to get Iran to make concessions they've never made before on no enrichment.”
But he also warned it could have the “opposite effect.” New sanctions from European countries could eliminate any trust Iran had in the negotiations, Shapiro said. And if Iran believes it’s going to face the snapback sanctions, it could turn closer to China and other countries with which it still has trading relationships.
Iran may think that it has “to establish the deterrent that we've never had before,” Shapiro said, adding that the country feels vulnerable after the U.S. bombed its nuclear facilities last month.
The Trump administration has issued several rounds of sanctions against Chinese-based companies and Chinese-owned vessels for trading with Iran, including those that have transported oil, machinery and materials Iran needs for its weapons programs (see 2505140073, 2506200028 and 2504290046).
“There are big question marks [about] whether we can get into those negotiations and whether that sanctions tool gives us the leverage that we would want,” Shapiro said. “But that's really got to be the requirement to capitalize on these military strikes.”