US hits Iran with new sanctions as Pompeo defends strategy

Washington, November 18

The United States hit Iran with new sanctions on Wednesday, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the case that undoing the actions of the Trump administration can be silly and harmful.

The Treasury and State departments introduced that they had focused a number one Iranian charity and quite a few of its associates for human rights violations. At the identical time, Pompeo launched a press release titled “The Importance of Sanctions on Iran,” which argued that the Trump administration’s strikes in opposition to Iran made the world safer and shouldn’t be reversed.

The sanctions introduced Wednesday goal Iran’s Mostazafan Foundation and roughly 160 of its subsidiaries, that are alleged to offer materials help to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for malign actions, together with the suppression of dissent.

“While (it) is ostensibly a charitable organization charged with providing benefits to the poor and oppressed, its holdings are expropriated from the Iranian people and are used by the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to enrich his office, reward his political allies, and persecute the regime’s enemies,” Treasury stated in a press release.

Also focused was Iran’s Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi, who it stated “played a central role in the Iranian regime’s human rights abuses against Iranian citizens.”

Many of the sanctions complement beforehand introduced penalties by merely including one other layer to them. But they arrive because the administration seeks to ramp up stress on Iran earlier than President-elect Joe Biden takes workplace. Biden has stated he needs to return to the rapprochement with Iran that began within the Obama administration however was ended by outgoing President Donald Trump.

In an obvious nod to the incoming Biden administration’s said plans to rejoin or renegotiated the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Trump withdrew from, Pompeo stated sanctions imposed in opposition to Iran had been “extraordinarily effective” in decreasing the menace from the nation. He stated that they had slashed Iran’s income by a whole bunch of billions of {dollars} for the reason that pullout in 2018.

“Sanctions are part of the pressures creating a new Middle East, bringing together countries that suffer the consequences of Iran’s violence and seek a region more peaceful and stable than before,” he stated in a press release. “Reducing that pressure is a dangerous choice, bound to weaken new partnerships for peace in the region and strengthen only the Islamic Republic.” Pompeo stated in its remaining time, the Trump administration would proceed to impose sanctions on Iran in addition to on overseas governments and corporations that violate them.

“Throughout the coming weeks and months, we will impose new sanctions on Iran, including using our nuclear, counterterrorism, and human rights authorities, each reflecting the wide range of malign behavior that continues to emanate from the Iranian regime,” he stated. “These sanctions are a critical tool of national security to preserve the safety of the region and to protect American lives.” — AP