The Trump administration imposes more vicious sanctions on Iran — partly to tie a President Biden’s hands

Donald Trump’s advisers have not given up the hope that they can goad Iran into conflict and boost their disappearing re-election chances — but some Trump officials are already looking ahead, and imposing even more vicious economic sanctions to stop an incoming Biden administration from returning to the nuclear deal.

The latest New York Times report on Trump’s provocations against Iran is even more biased than usual. The first sentence asserts that 

tensions between Washington and Tehran continue to escalate in the days leading up to the American presidential election.

You don’t know whether to laugh or get enraged. The implication is that this “escalation” in “tensions” is somehow just happening for no reason. In fact, all the evidence is that the U.S., along with Israel, has in recent months carried out sabotage attacks inside Iran, destroying power plants, aluminum and chemical factories, a medical clinic and 7 ships at the port of Bushehr. But the Iranian regime has not responded, recognizing that retaliation will boost Trump’s re-election. 

There is more Times journalistic malpractice. The paper once again quotes the ill-named “Foundation for Defense of Democracies” — without telling its readers that the FDD is a mouthpiece for Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel, and is funded by billionaire pro-Israel lobby donors. If the Times wants Israel’s view, it should ask Israel directly: go to the organ grinder instead of repeatedly interviewing the monkey.

The Times article does explain that the latest U.S. sanctions, imposed on Iran’s oil sector, are designed “to create a new obstacle should any future president seek to open negotiations with Iran.” In an interview with the Abu Dhabi National, Trump’s special envoy for Iran, Elliott Abrams, let the cat even further out of the bag. Abrams said that,

Those who believe that a President Biden could come to office in January and by the second or third day all sanctions will be gone, will find out that it’s not feasible even if they wanted to do it.

(In passing, Abrams should be ashamed to even mention “Iran.” During the Reagan administration, he was convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra affair. For younger readers, in Iran-Contra the Reaganites actually sold weapons to the current Iranian regime so the U.S. could use the proceeds to fund a brutal counter-revolutionary movement in Nicaragua.)

Meanwhile, the principled experts at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) — who are no friends to the repressive clerical regime in Tehran — point out that the vicious U.S. sanctions are actually making democratization in Iran even more difficult. Sima Toossi, a senior research analyst at NIAC, explains that 

These sanctions are creating unprecedented poverty and crushing the Iranian middle class and civil society. The academic literature shows that they will diminish the potential for peaceful democratic change and entrench authoritarianism.