According to Richard Goldberg, the oft-heard claim that the U.S. faces a binary choice—between capitulation to the demands of the Islamic Republic regarding its nuclear program and war—is false. Washington emerged from the recent round of fighting in Iraq with a strengthened position, and Goldberg urges the Trump administration to tighten sanctions even further:
Many wrongly believe the United States has already reached “maximum pressure” on Iran. In truth, several critical pressure points remain untapped. The administration this month rolled out fresh sanctions targeting Iran’s construction, mining, and manufacturing sectors, along with the first step in a crackdown on violators of American sanctions on Iranian metals and petrochemicals. Sanctions targeting Iranian shipping lines are set to take effect in June and could be expedited for more immediate impact.
Another potential target: Iran’s financial sector. . . . In 2018, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Representative Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin proposed legislation imposing sanctions on Iran’s financial sector, which the United States recently determined to be a “primary jurisdiction of money-laundering concern.” The effect could be destabilizing, immediately cutting off all non-sanctioned banks inside Iran from international commerce, forcing their disconnection from the global financial-messaging system known as SWIFT, and rendering all remaining foreign-exchange reserves held outside Iran inaccessible for any purpose.
Additional steps could be taken to deprive Iran of the strategic benefits still enjoyed under the nuclear deal and the related United Nations Security Council resolution—particularly, the scheduled lifting of key restrictions on its nuclear program, missile development, and conventional-arms transfers. Iran’s recent expansion of uranium enrichment coupled with its consistently violent behavior provides the United States and Europe with ample pretext to trigger the deal’s “snapback” clause, which would restore prior Security Council resolutions on Iran and eliminate a key disincentive to an Iranian decision to negotiate. The United Kingdom, France, and Germany—the Iran deal’s European contingent—recently initiated the process to do just that.
Read more on New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/opinion/trump-iran.html