A second dispute centers around recent statements from Treasury Department officials suggesting that the administration is now set to grant Iran non-nuclear sanctions relief, including indirect access to the US financial system, weeks after top Iranian officials began demanding this type of sanctions relief. Corker said Szubin reassured him that the USA was not planning to ease sanctions on Iran.
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While the administration has promised not to grant Iran direct access to the US financial system, officials have remained mum on reports that it will grant Iran indirect access to USA dollars via foreign banks. Menendez called for sanctioning financial institutions that support Iran’s ballistic missile program, while multiple senators argued for reauthorizing the Iran Sanctions Act in order to affirm the United States’ readiness to snap back sanctions on Tehran if it violates the nuclear deal. Some analysts say the regime’s illegal missile tests violate one element of the deal, critics have raised suspicions about Iranian activity around an infamous nuclear site, and the regime managed to increase its uranium stockpile while enrichment was ostensibly halted during the interim agreement.
“While full implementation of the (nuclear agreement) will ensure that Iran is unable to develop a nuclear warhead to place on a missile, we will continue to use all available multilateral and unilateral tools, including sanctions, when appropriate, to impede Iran’s ballistic missile program”, Shannon said.
The administration has sanctioned several entities linked to the missile program in response to the recent launches, he noted.
Russia has filed no applications with the United Nations Security Council for Su-30 fighter jet supplies to Iran, hence, the United States’ threats to clock this deal is just a speculation, a well-informed source at the Russian Foreign Ministry told TASS on Tuesday.
Responding to skeptical USA lawmakers, Undersecretary of State Thomas Shannon insisted that the United States would maintain sanctions pressure on the Islamic republic.
“These limited sanctions are too weak to affect Iran’s behavior”, AIPAC said Monday of the new sanctions, which target an industrial group involved in manufacturing the missiles, the missile command of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, and companies providing support to Mahan Air, which is affiliated with the Guards Corps. President Obama on Friday criticized Iranian leaders for undermining the “spirit” of last year’s historic nuclear agreement, even as they stick to the “letter” of the pact. “It has effectively cut off all of Iran’s pathways to building a nuclear weapon”. But Shannon said those acts were contingent on not complicating or breaching the Iran nuclear deal.
“We would block the approval of fighter aircraft”, he told a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, noting that any such sale would have to be approved by the Security Council, reported Reuters. “But from our point of view, these launches are prohibited, and we’re going to do everything we can to stop them”.
Shannon said it has not been his intention to say that the USA was “walking on eggshells with the Iranians” or “pulling punches”.
Critics say that its time limits enable Iran to get a nuclear weapon in the next 10 to 15 years – though the administration counters that without the deal, Iran could have gotten a nuclear bomb within months or a few years.
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Corker also floated the idea of including language to make it clear that Iran could not trade with Europe in USA dollars.
