Trump warns of more Iran sanctions, but few targets left

Bloomberg

President Donald Trump is threatening Iran with additional sanctions on Monday, but there’s not much left for the US to target because most of the Islamic Republic’s economy has been crippled by earlier penalties.
The US is already sanctioning significant sectors including oil, banks and steel, leaving smaller targets including certain exports and government officials. Trump could hit Iran’s central bank with secondary sanctions, at the risk of hurting humanitarian trade.
“The Trump administration has already hit most of Iran’s cash-earning exports and pushed the country into a deep recession this year,” said Peter Harrell, a fellow at the Center for New American Security, a Washington-based research group. “A lot of exports to Iran have dried up because of risk aversion and all the banking sanctions.”
Trump announced plans for major sanctions, following his abrupt cancellation of planned air strikes against the Islamic Republic for shooting down a US Navy drone.
More than 80 percent of Iran’s economy is under sanction, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said before heading to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to rally a front against Iran.
The new sanctions “will be a further effort to ensure that their capacity not only to grow their economy but to evade sanctions becomes more and more difficult,” Pompeo said.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry said the new penalties won’t force the country to negotiate or capitulate.
“Are there any other sanctions left for the US to impose on Iran?” ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
The Trump administration “knows full awell that if pressure and sanctions were the answer, they would have yielded results much earlier.” Iran’s navy chief warned earlier that other drones would be downed if US intrusions into Iranian airspace continue. The US says the aircraft was in international airspace.
The US has applied sanctions to nearly 1,000 Iranian entities, including banks, individuals, ships and aircraft. In May, the Trump administration prohibited the purchase of Iranian iron, steel, aluminum and copper.
The US has also revoked waivers that had allowed eight countries including India and China to import Iranian oil despite American sanctions. Trump seeks to drive Iranian oil exports to zero to force Tehran to abandon support for militant groups in the Middle East and renegotiate the 2015 nuclear accord the US quit a year ago. Observed crude flows from Iran dropped to 190,000 barrels a day in the first half of June, less than 10 percent of the volume shipped in early 2018.
Forecasts from earlier this year show Iran’s GDP set to contract 6 percent this year after declining 4 percent in 2018.

Russia: New US sanctions on Iran to worsen tensions
Bloomberg

Russia warned that the looming new US sanctions against Iran are counterproductive and will worsen tensions in the region, news services reported.
It’s a “deliberate escalation of the whole situation,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Monday, according to Interfax.
Russia will take measures to counter the new US penalties, he added without specifying further, RIA Novosti and Tass reported.
US President Donald Trump announced that Washington will impose new sanctions on Iran in
response to the shooting down of an American drone last week, after
deciding against military action.