U.S. Official Central to Hawkish Iran Policies Departs NSC

By Nick Wadhams

Richard Goldberg, the U.S. National Security Council official who clashed with other members of the administration over his push for a more hawkish stance toward Iran, is leaving the job after one year for personal reasons, a person familiar with the matter said.

Goldberg’s departure comes just as tensions with Iran have soared following a U.S. strike in Baghdad that killed Qassem Soleimani, a key Iranian general the administration said was plotting “imminent and sinister attacks” against American diplomats and military personnel.

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton created Goldberg’s job—director for countering Iran’s weapons of mass destruction—explicitly for him. The goal was to counter what Bolton saw as a desire at the departments of State and Treasury to weaken the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.

Tension over that issue flared in March as the administration mulled whether to extend waivers allowing Iran to sell a limited amount of oil. The waivers were eventually ended in May.

That fight was only one of the administration’s internecine battles related to Iran and underscored the influence wielded by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the think tank where Goldberg previously worked, in pushing for a tougher line against Iran.

Goldberg will return to FDD, which continued to pay his salary during his time on the National Security Council.

Photo: IRNA

U.S. Weighs More Iran Sanctions Over Potential Trade With Europe

By Nick Wadhams

The Trump administration is weighing sanctions against the Iranian financial body set up as a go-between for humanitarian trade with Europe, a move likely to sever the economic and humanitarian lifeline that France, Germany and the U.K. have sought to create for Tehran.

The U.S. measures would target the Special Trade and Finance Institute, which Iran established as a counterpart to the European mechanism known as Instex, according to a senior administration official who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations.

The official said the STFI is essentially an extension of Iran’s central bank, which already is covered by U.S. sanctions and, according to the administration, hasn’t implemented minimum global safeguards against money laundering and terrorism financing.

European countries established Instex in January to help shield limited trade with Iran from U.S. sanctions imposed after President Donald Trump withdrew from the multinational Iran nuclear deal a year ago. The new sanctions, if they take effect, would probably derail faltering European efforts to sustain some trade with Iran by avoiding the use of U.S. dollars or the American financial system.

Such a move—still in the early planning stages—would exacerbate divisions with European nations that have chafed against the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. It would be the latest effort meant to force the Islamic Republic back to the negotiating table to discuss a deal stronger than the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 agreement that limited Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

“If they are looking at sanctioning STFI, you’re essentially trying to kill INSTEX through the back door,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, referring to the Iranian body. “If the U.S. were to take action that kills INSTEX on arrival, my sense is there will be even more political backing in Europe to oppose the U.S.”

The sanctions deliberations come as German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas visits Tehran. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Monday the two were having “frank talks” about how Iran could still get the economic benefits it expected by agreeing to the nuclear accord.

Yet in a tacit acknowledgment of the effectiveness of U.S. sanctions, European nations have significantly scaled back their ambition for the mechanism, saying trade through it would be limited only to transactions covering humanitarian goods.

U.S. sanctions against Iran already include carve-outs for humanitarian transactions. But European nations argue that INSTEX is needed to provide European companies and banks stronger assurances that they won’t be hit by U.S. sanctions even if they limit themselves to humanitarian purposes.

While the INSTEX mechanism is relatively obscure and would probably be used in limited cases, its opponents say that letting it survive could create a powerful economic tool later that could deal a blow to the effectiveness of U.S. sanctions more broadly.

One possibility, they say, is that Trump could lose re-election in 2020 and a Democratic president could look the other way as European nations used INSTEX for a wider range of trade with Iran, even as sanctions remained in place.

Another possibility is that other nations, including American adversaries, could use INSTEX as a model in the future and avoid the U.S. financial system entirely.

“The development of INSTEX is really worrying for U.S. sanction policy in the long run,” said Emma Ashford, a research fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington. “INSTEX sets up a framework other countries can use in the future.”

Officials at the State Department and the National Security Council declined to comment on the possibility of new sanctions.

Nuclear Deal

Punishing the STFI could doom INSTEX because it raises the possibility of sanctions risk to anyone who’s a part of the European mechanism. The initiative drives home a letter sent by the U.S. Treasury Department in early May to Per Fischer, the president of INSTEX, arguing that the financial body could face sanctions.

European officials say that establishing INSTEX is imperative to keep Iran abiding by the nuclear deal, which they credit with restraining the Islamic Republic’s nuclear capabilities. They’re especially eager to get it up and running before early July, when Iran has threatened to abandon the accord unless it sees greater benefits from abiding by its terms.

Visa Restrictions

The U.S. has sent conflicting signals about its attitude toward INSTEX, with some officials taking a hard line and others saying it could be acceptable. During a stop in Berlin on May 31, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said the vehicle was “unproblematic” as long as it’s used to facilitate trade in humanitarian goods and other transactions the U.S. has exempted from sanctions.

Yet Republican hawks in the administration and Congress disagree, saying that channels for humanitarian trade with Iran already exist. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is considering a draft bill that threatens sanctions against the European and Iranian finance vehicles.

Skeptics point out that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, covered by existing sanctions, has used humanitarian front companies in the past.

The risk of crushing INSTEX now is that the U.S. could face an even greater backlash if it closes off an avenue for legitimate humanitarian trade, according to Suzanne Maloney, deputy director of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution.

“It does call into question what the long-term strategy here is,” Maloney said. “If there’s no room for humanitarian aid for Iran, literally no viable mechanisms for facilitating those transactions, then clearly this is purely a punitive strategy and one that is intended to wreak maximum havoc on the Iranian population.”

Photo: IRNA

Pompeo to Urge Iranians Abroad to 'Support' Anti-Regime Protests

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo plans on Sunday to urge members of the Iranian diaspora to "support" protesters in Iran, as the Trump administration hints at a desire for regime change in Tehran after turning its back on the Iranian nuclear accord. 

President Donald Trump—who has made the Islamic republic a favorite target since his unexpected rapprochement with North Korea—decided on May 8 to restore all the sanctions that had been lifted as part of the multi-nation agreement aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Following the US withdrawal that stunned even Washington's closest European allies, Pompeo on May 21 unveiled a "new strategy" intended to force Iran to yield to a dozen stringent demands or else face the "strongest sanctions in history."  

The next US step is due at 6:00 pm Sunday (0100 GMT Monday) in the Ronald Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, California, when the secretary of state delivers a speech entitled "Supporting Iranian Voices."

With the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 a year away, Pompeo plans to retrace "40 years of stealing from the Iranian people, the terrorism they have committed around the region, the brutal repression at home" as well as the "religious persecution" there, a senior State Department official told reporters ahead of the speech.

The venue for Pompeo's address is significant, the official noted: some 250,000 Iranian-Americans live in Southern California.   

"He will be exposing some of the corruption" of a "kleptocratic regime," the diplomat told reporters. "The regime has prioritized its ideological agenda over the welfare of the Iranian people."

'Demands For a Better Life'

Pompeo launched his campaign against Iran on Twitter last month, saying the government in Tehran and the Revolutionary Guards—the regime's elite armed
corps—had "plundered the country's wealth" in proxy wars "while Iranian families struggle."

The Trump administration's strategy appears simple: to exploit the already growing tensions within Iranian society that are being exacerbated by renewed US sanctions that have forced some foreign firms to leave.  

There have been a series of anti-government protests in Iran in recent months, prompted by an array of different issues and concerns.

The State Department briefer said Pompeo plans to support "the legitimate demands of the Iranian people, especially their economic demands for a better life."

But how far will he and the administration go?

"That's the key question," Behnam Ben Taleblu of the conservative pressure group Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told AFP. "Pompeo and the administration can do more than just rhetorical support to the Iranian protester."

How far will the US go?

Several Iranian dissidents have written to Pompeo to urge him to re-establish punitive measures against the state-owned Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting network, which they accuse of abetting human rights violations.  

Word of Pompeo's planned speech has fanned speculation on Washington's precise intentions.

The State Department insists that the US seeks merely a "change in behavior" by the regime.

But some senior members of the Trump administration.—notably national security advisor John Bolton.—have made it clear in the past that they would like to see the Tehran regime topple, and Pompeo himself said in May that "the Iranian people get to choose for themselves the kind of leadership they want."

To Behnam Ben Taleblu, "genuine regime change can only come from inside." 

With an upsurge of "Iranians of all different social classes protesting," he said, the Trump administration will have to decide whether it wants to "support elements that actually want to change the regime."

Diplomats and experts in Washington are divided as to whether the protests and social tensions within Iran pose a true threat to the Islamic republic. 

Nor is there agreement on what it would actually mean should the Iranian regime fall—but some find that uncertainty deeply worrying.

"The more likely result of regime collapse would be a military coup in the name of restoring order, led by the man Washington's Iran hawks fear the most: Gen. Qasem Suleimani," the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, according to Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

"Exerting maximum pressure on Iran could bring about America's worst nightmare," he added on Twitter.

Photo Credit: Wikicommons