Steven Mnuchin Briefs Press on Newly Imposed Iran Sanctions

President Donald Trump said he’s imposing sanctions on Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his office, a provocative step designed to increase pressure on the Islamic Republic.

Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that the sanctions would deny Khamenei access to financial resources.

“The supreme leader of Iran is the one who ultimately is responsible for the hostile conduct of the regime,” Trump said.

Trump last week abruptly canceled planned air strikes against the Iran for shooting down a U.S. Navy drone on Thursday. The administration also blames Iran for recent attacks on two oil tankers near the Persian Gulf, though Iran denies it.

“Who knows what is going to happen?” Trump said. “I can only tell you we cannot let Iran ever have a nuclear weapon.”

The U.S. already has sanctioned more than 80% of Iran’s economy, according to Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. He’s en route to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to rally a front against Iran.

Brian O’Toole, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who previously worked in the U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions unit, called the sanctions “purely symbolic.”

“It will have an effect because it will annoy the Iranians and make negotiations hard to pull off if the supreme leader is sanctioned,” O’Toole.

Trump had warned of additional sanctions on Saturday. At the same time, he said an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he thinks Iranian leaders want to negotiate and he’s willing to talk with no preconditions except that the outcome must be Iran acquiring no nuclear weapons. Trump said the proposed discussions have “nothing to do with oil.”

Even before the new penalties were announced, the U.S. had applied sanctions to nearly 1,000 Iranian entities, including banks, individuals, ships and aircraft. In May, the Trump administration prohibited the purchase of Iranian iron, steel, aluminum and copper.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry had said new penalties won’t force the country to negotiate or capitulate.

“Are there any other sanctions left for the U.S. to impose on Iran?” ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said Monday prior to Trump’s announcment, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency. The Trump administration “knows full well that if pressure and sanctions were the answer, they would have yielded results much earlier.”

Tensions have spiked in the Gulf since May, when the Trump administration revoked waivers on the import of Iranian oil, squeezing its economy a year after the U.S. walked away from the landmark 2015 deal meant to prevent the Islamic Republic from developing a nuclear weapon. Since then, a spate of attacks on oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz shipping choke point have raised the specter of war and pushed up oil prices. The U.S. has blamed the attacks on Tehran, which has denied any wrongdoing.

On Monday, Trump questioned in comments on Twitter why the U.S. was protecting the shipping route on behalf of other countries.

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