Trump administration sanctions Iranian Defense Ministry, Venezuela’s Maduro for aiding Iran’s weapons programs

On Saturday, the United States unilaterally re-imposed U.N. sanctions on Tehran through a snapback process, which other U.N. Security Council members have previously said Washington does not have the authority to execute.

“If U.N. member states fail to fulfill their obligations to implement these sanctions, the United States is prepared to use our domestic authorities to impose consequences for those failures and ensure that Iran does not reap the benefits of U.N.-prohibited activity,” Pompeo said in a Saturday evening statement. 

“Our maximum pressure campaign on the Iranian regime will continue until Iran reaches a comprehensive agreement with us to rein in its proliferation threats and stops spreading chaos, violence, and bloodshed,” Pompeo said, adding that in the coming days the Trump administration “will announce a range of additional measures to strengthen the implementation of U.N. sanctions and hold violators accountable.”

The U.S. special envoy for Venezuela and Iran, Elliott Abrams, told reporters last week that it “remains to be seen” whether U.N. member states will enforce the re-imposed sanctions. 

“We will have some announcements over the weekend and more announcements on Monday, and then subsequent days next week as to exactly how we are planning to enforce these returned U.N. sanctions,” Abrams explained.

Last month, Pompeo addressed the 15 member nations of the U.N. Security Council and reiterated that the Trump administration will continue its maximum pressure campaign in order to rein in Tehran’s missile and nuclear programs.

He asserted on August 20 that the U.S. would enforce sweeping sanctions on Iran, even though the United Nations Security Council voted to not extend a crucial arms embargo on the rogue regime.

“I have not had a single world leader or one of my counterparts tell me that they think it makes any sense at all for the Iranians to be able to purchase and sell high-end weapons systems, which is what will happen on Oct. 18 of this year, absent the actions that we took at the United Nations yesterday,” Pompeo told CNBC a day later.

“We’re not going to let them have a nuclear weapon, we’re not going to let them have hundreds of billions of dollars in wealth from selling weapons systems. Every leader around the world knows it’s a bad idea,” he said, calling Iran “the world’s largest state sponsor of terror.”

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/21/trump-administration-sanctions-iranian-defense-ministry-venezuelas-maduro.html