By William Tucker
The Obama administration has levied new sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), or more specifically, Gen. Rostam Qasemi and four subsidiaries of a construction firm that he operates. This action is not unprecedented, and in fact was initiated under executive order 13224 which President Bush signed two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to obstruct terrorist funding. Furthermore, the U.S. officially designated the IRGC as a "specially designated global terrorist" in 2007 following allegations of Iranian support for insurgents in Iraq.
While the original purpose of targeted sanctions against IRGC entities was to discourage foreign nations and businesses from working with Iran for its ties to terrorism, they have now become a tool for pressuring Tehran from continuing work on its nuclear program. The new sanctions may make for good press, but they are hardly expected to yield results. The reason for this is the sanctions are only binding to U.S. persons and businesses, leaving foreign nations the ability to fully cooperate with Iran on any number of business opportunities. As the world's largest economy the U.S. does have the ability to wield its massive buying power to pressure other countries to prevent them from doing business with Tehran, but this action is not guaranteed to work and could very well work against Washington's interests.
In the immediate future the U.N. Security Council will take up the topic of imposing international sanctions against Iran, but once again success in this action faces serious challenges. For international sanctions to be passed all permanent members of the Security Council must vote in favor of implementation, but with diplomatic ties between the U.S., Russia, and China strained at the moment this is unlikely to happen. Although these sanctions are new the same problems exist in implementation making the other options for dealing with the Iranian nuclear program, such as military action, more likely.
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