The Trump administration slapped new financial sanctions on 22 Iranian businesses accused of supporting Tehran’s paramilitary forces that U.S. officials say engage in violent crackdowns against dissidents and recruit child soldiers to fight in neighboring countries.
The crackdown represents another tightening of the financial noose around Tehran as the Trump administration nears a Nov. 4 deadline to cut off Iran’s critical oil revenues, part of a pressure campaign on Iran after Mr. Trump this spring pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated under President Obama.
The Treasury Department announced the penalties against three Iranian banks, a top mining firm, investment companies and other businesses, part of a multibillion-dollar network which the administration said is engaged in supporting terrorism through the Basij Resistance Force. They include the Iran Tractor Manufacturing Co., the largest tractor company in the Middle East, and Mobarakeh Steel Company, the largest steelmaker in Iran.
The Treasury Department cited the Basij group’s ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said the businesses support the Basij Resistance Force’s “efforts to recruit, train, and indoctrinate child soldiers who are coerced into combat.”
“This is a very important step in our maximum pressure campaign and our overall Iran strategy,” said a senior administration official.
Administration briefers said the latest action will serve as a “stark warning to international companies all over the world” to avoid doing business with the Iranian network or face possible financial penalties themselves.”
The government of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has insisted it will not bow to the U.S. sanctions campaign, and has been negotiating with other signatories to the 2015 deal — including Russia, China and major European allies — to keep the lines of commerce open.
But the threat of being cut off from the far larger U.S. market and banking system has already caused a number of major Western corporations and investors to pull out of previously announced deals with Iranian partners. Trump administration officials are predicting that efforts to escape the U.S. sanctions campaign will prove futile, forcing Iran to return to the bargaining table.
“There’s still talk about continued investment and trade with Iran,” one U.S. official said Tuesday. “Our expectation is that any banking relationships with those banks will be terminated, with assets frozen.”
Officials said the financial network enables the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its subsidiaries to recruit and train child soldiers as young as 12, saying armed Iranian children have died in Syria and elsewhere.
“The recruiting of 12-year-olds is unacceptable, it’s disgusting,” said a senior administration official. “We think it’s incredibly important that the world understands what they’re doing.”
The new sanctions come a day after a group of reformist newspapers in Iran published an unusual joint editorial urging the U.S. to ease the sanctions, warning they were boosting anti-U.S. hard-liners inside Iran.
The Associated Press reported that editorial was published in both Farsi and English in at least eight state-owned and pro-reform dailies. The editorial said the U.S. has “lied” about the purpose of sanctions, which target the needs of ordinary people and curtail access to medical supplies and equipment.
The joint editorial said that “trade restrictions, blockades, embargoes, freezing of assets and other economic sanctions are incompatible with the Charter of the United Nations.”
Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, who publishes the “Bourse and Bazaar” website devoted to Iranian economic news, wrote Monday, “Whilse there is anger over the Rouhani administration’s somewhat facile reassurances regarding the impact of sanctions, there is greater anger felt towards the Trump administration, which has appeared to cast aside the long-standing liberal principles of American leadership, simply to enact suffering on the Iranian people.”
⦁ David R. Sands contributed to this article, which was based in part on wire service reports.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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