Donald trump has asked the Treasury department to “substantially” toughen economic sanctions on Iran, as the US weighs its response to a strike against Saudi Arabian oil facilities that knocked out more than half the kingdom’s production.
The US president made the announcement in a tweet on Wednesday, shortly after tapping Robert O’brien, the state department’s envoy for hostage negotiations, to be his next national security adviser. Mr O’brien replaces John Bolton, who abruptly exited the White House this month.
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Mr Trump’s demand for more aggressive economic sanctions suggests he is initially taking a more cautious approach to the crisis triggered by the attack on the Saudi oil facility. Iran-backed Houthi militias in Yemen claimed responsibility for the strike, which on Monday triggered a sharp rise in oil prices. Mr Trump said on Tuesday that Iran appeared to be behind the attack, as the Pentagon worked with US allies on a response.
The US has imposed crippling economic sanctions on Iran since abandoning the nuclear deal negotiated by President Barack Obama during his second term in office, meaning that there is not much scope for additional punishment. “The Trump administration will be scraping the bottom of the barrel,” said Henry Rome, an analyst at the Eurasia Group in Washington.
“They’ve gone down the list of top industries and crossed them out. They can target minor industries and individuals . . . and they can certainly make announcements every day for the next year and a half, but at this point there is very little utility to that,” he added. The US Treasury did not respond to a request for comment.
A week ago, before the Saudi Arabian strike, media reports suggested Mr Trump had discussed reducing sanctions against the Islamic republic in an effort to facilitate a meeting with Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, at the UN General Assembly this month. The likelihood of such a summit has faded in the wake of the attack.
Mr Bolton, who departed the White House this month, held extremely hawkish views on Iran that had put him at odds with Mr Trump, along with other disagreements on policy in Afghanistan and North Korea.
Mr O’brien’s opinions are less well known. A Los Angeles-based lawyer, Mr O’brien is a former UN and George W Bush administration official who wrote a book in 2016 titled While America Slept: Restoring American Leadership to a World in Crisis.
US sanctions on Iran already cover sectors ranging from petrochemicals to oil, precious metals and vehicles. Curbs could possibly be expanded to cover certain manufacturing components that have been spared.
Mr Rome said that among the most effective steps Mr Trump could take would be to work with China to cut its own business dealings with Iran. However, that is unlikely to happen given the trade war with Beijing and the longstanding diplomatic ties between China and Iran.
After Mr Trump’s tweet on Wednesday, Riyadh expressed satisfaction with the support it was receiving from Washington. Prince Khalid bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s deputy defence minister, said Mr Trump’s administration had “confronted the Iranian regime’s and terrorist organisations’ aggression in an unprecedented way”.
