by Amir Basiri
The unprecedented sanctions passed by House lawmakers last Tuesday and the Senate last Thursday are a milestone achievement in countering the Iranian regime's belligerence and fixing some of the key flaws contained in the nuclear deal hammered between Iran and world powers in 2015.Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the nuclear pact is formally known,
Iran was effectively given a free pass on all its non-nuclear activities as long as it committed to limiting, not dismantling, its nuclear program. The JCPOA was the nucleus of the Obama administration's Iran policy.
In contrast, Trump has called it "the worst deal ever negotiated" and has assigned a White House team to find a credible case for declining Iran's compliance with the accord.
In the two years since the signing of the agreement, Iran has exploited the JCPOA's loopholes and economic incentives to speed up its ballistic missile program, expand its terrorist activities in neighboring countries, and ramp up its domestic human rights violations without fear of retribution from the international community. Fearing Iran would walk away from the deal, Obama refrained from dealing any of those activities in earnest.
Although sanctions had been previously imposed against Iran's terrorist activities and human rights violations, the new measure is significant because it directly targets the entirety of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the military body that runs Iran's foreign terrorism portfolio, its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons program, and is largely responsible for the crackdown on dissidents and violation of the Iranian people's most basic rights.
No comments:
Post a Comment