WASHINGTON – The Trump administration is imposing sanctions on Iran following its recent ballistic missile test.
Officials said the new measures were in response to Iran’s recent ballistic missile test and its support for Huthi rebels in Yemen, who recently targeted a Saudi warship.
The sanctions do not, officials say, mark a retreat from US commitments under the Iran nuclear deal to lift measures targeting Tehran’s alleged bid to build a nuclear warhead.
“Iran is playing with fire — they don’t appreciate how ‘kind’ President Obama was to them. Not me!” Trump tweeted Friday.
US intelligence and Treasury officials are constantly scrutinizing Iran’s networks, looking for evidence of extremist-funding and advanced weapons procurement.
The Trump administration has sought to take a harder line on Iran, banning its citizens from entering the U.S. and accusing the nation of interfering in the affairs of U.S. allies in the Middle East. But the sanctions announced Friday were limited in scope, serving mostly as a warning signal.
“These are not major players,” Sam Cutler, a sanctions lawyer at Horizon Client Access in Washington, said of those on the list. “It seems to be a follow-up on a previous action that the Obama administration took in terms of identifying people in existing networks that had been previously sanctioned. I see this as consistent with prior policy rather than anything new, the rhetoric notwithstanding.”
In a statement Friday morning, the Treasury Department published a list of 13 individuals and 12 entities facing new restrictions for supporting the missile program, having links to terrorism or providing support for Iran’s hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The entities include companies based in Tehran, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and China, Bloomberg reported.
