The Trump administration released more details this week of how it plans to slap sanctions back on Iran. It is an ambitious and aggressive policy to change Iran’s behavior, but it is premised on faulty assumptions, and ultimately may be counterproductive.
Two months ago, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo outlined 12 demands of Iran. The list reads more like a chronicle of Iran’s undesirable activity than an actual platform for negotiation. It foretold the inevitable reimposition of U.S. sanctions on Iran unless it completely changed the premise of its foreign policy. Now the State Department says that one goal of the renewed energy sanctions is to reduce Iran’s oil exports to zero until it begins acting “like a normal country.”
The first assumption is that the policy will work. Several countries have said they do not intend to respect fresh U.S. sanctions, and the largest importers of Iran’s oil are likely to find ways to limit the effectiveness of the sanctions. Turkey has a long history of importing sanctioned oil from Iraq and Iran, and does not believe that it is bound by U.S. sanctions. While the United States could put sanctions on Turkey, doing so will come at the price of risking Turkey’s assistance in countering Iran in Syria.