Nephew, the author of the book The Art of Sanctions, the former head of the Iran desk at the United States National Security Council (NSC) and responsible for the development and implementation of sanctions at the US Department of State, in a new note in The Washington Institute for the Near East Policy, has reviewed the difference between the current situation and the period before the JCPOA and the maximum pressure from the West.
He acknowledged that the new strategic realities and the constant challenge of its implementation make it difficult to revive the regime of heavy international sanctions.
Nephew wrote, in a new essay called Easier Said than Done: Renewing Maximum Pressure on Iran,
In July 2015, much of the world exhaled with the announcement that a nuclear deal had been struck among the United States, its partners, and Iran. Although the terms of the deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) were — and remain — contentious, for many, the deal denied Iran the ability to acquire nuclear weapons for at least 10 years, when key restrictions would expire. Likewise, for many (including the author), the deal vindicated the use of sanctions to create leverage in support of diplomacy.
Sanctions – and especially the use of so-called “secondary” sanctions by the Obama administration on other countries and firms doing business with Iran – had put Iran in a position where it had to make serious concessions on its nuclear program.
The Trump administration said the JCPOA would not prevent Iran from ultimately acquiring nuclear weapons and that it failed to address either Iran’s ballistic missile program or its terrorist activities in the region. It withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018, seeking to negotiate a better deal with the Iranians and, over the following 2.5 years, applying “maximum pressure” in hopes of doing so. This effort failed to secure a deal. In 2021, the Biden Administration sought to return the United States to the JCPOA. That effort too has failed.
Contrary to some impressions, sanctions are hard to design, monitor and implement, and their associated campaigns consume massive amounts of time and energy. They may appear as smooth as a duck gliding on water, but underneath there is fierce paddling.
The Iran campaign that culminated in the JCPOA in 2015 began in earnest in 2005, with the Bush administration’s Executive Order 13382 and its targeted sanctions on Iranian, Syrian and North Korean entities and individuals involved in weapons-of-mass-destruction programs. This Executive Order was succeeded over the next ten years by at least four pieces of legislation, more than six executive orders, and four UN Security Council resolutions. Each document identified new targets for sanctions, including individuals, entities, and industries that would be subject to various restrictions and prohibitions. This history is described in more detail in The Art of Sanctions, which also outlines the way in which these sanctions were implemented and the work that went into making sanctions effective.
The really troublesome part was the enforcement of sanctions themselves. Sanctions may be self-executing in theory, but that’s not what happens in reality. Iran will not respect a prohibition on its import of missile parts, for example, nor will companies, shippers and banks do so automatically. These entities have to be informed of the prohibition and what’s required of them. When they break the rules, they have to be investigated and subjected to consequences. Compliance departments may grow more capable of spotting Iranian tricks and companies more responsive to sanctions requirements, but this takes time and constant vigilance on the part of sanctioners.
Mindful of the complexity of enforcement, the United States started in 2006 to underscore to governments, companies, banks and service providers the risks of looking the other way (or, in some cases, actively hiding their involvement with Iran). The United States threatened to impose sanctions on those who provided “material support” to Iranian bad actors. Eventually the US made those threats meaningful through a structure of “secondary sanctions” whereby any business with designated Iranian actors would run the risk of banks (and eventually companies) being cut off from the United States. (They were “secondary” because they are concerned with the activities of non-US persons, as opposed to primary sanctions that focus on US persons.) Massive fines levied against banks enhanced this threat.
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