TEHRAN — On June 30, the Danish shipping giant Maersk startled Iran’s trade officials by abruptly pulling out of the country’s three largest ports. Company officials said little about the decision, but the timing was striking: A week earlier, the Obama administration had declared the ports’ operator to be an arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, a group linked to terrorism and weapons trafficking.
Other shipping companies followed suit, and soon Iran was scrambling to find alternative ways to import food and other critical supplies. Now Iranian officials are warning of economic pain in the months ahead — precisely the effect that U.S. officials were hoping for.
After two years of failed efforts to entice Iran with diplomatic carrots, the Obama administration is quietly toasting successes at using economic sticks. A series of U.S. and international sanctions imposed over the past year have slowly undermined Iran’s ability to conduct trade by targeting the country’s access to international banking, insurers and transportation companies. Like Maersk, some firms voluntarily cut ties with Iranian companies that U.S. officials say are front operations for the Revolutionary Guard.
At the same time, the United States has backed international efforts to lower global petroleum prices, bringing the collateral benefit of stripping Iran of revenue that it has used to offset the economic costs of sanctions.
The measures have not slowed Iran’s race to make the enriched uranium needed to produce a nuclear weapon. But current and former U.S. officials say the sanctions are having unparalleled success in creating significant hardships for key Iranian industries.
“The impact is real,” said National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, describing canceled or frozen projects in Iran’s energy sector alone that total $60 billion. With sanctions broader and deeper than ever, Iran finds it difficult to “do business with any reputable bank internationally, to conduct transactions in euros or dollars, to acquire insurance for its shipping, [or] to gain new capital investment or technology infusions,” Vietor said.
Read more at The Washington Post.