Human Rights Watch, October 29, 2019
Summary
In May 2018, the Trump administration formally withdrew from the international nuclear agreement with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), agreed upon by the Obama administration in July 2015. Over the next 120 days, until November 5, 2018, the US government re-imposed all economic sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program that had been previously lifted, including “secondary sanctions” on non-US entities that conduct financial or commercial transactions with Iran.
Though the US government has built exemptions for humanitarian imports into its sanction regime, broad US sanctions against Iranian banks, coupled with aggressive rhetoric from US officials, have drastically constrained Iran’s ability to finance such humanitarian imports. The consequences of redoubled US sanctions, whether intentional or not, pose a serious threat to Iranians’ right to health and access to essential medicines—and has almost certainly contributed to documented shortages—ranging from a lack of critical drugs for epilepsy patients to limited chemotherapy medications for Iranians with cancer.
At the core of the harmful knock-on effects of renewed US sanctions on Iran is that in practice, these sanctions have largely deterred international banks and firms from participating in commercial or financial transactions with Iran, including for exempted humanitarian transactions, due to the fear of triggering US secondary sanctions on themselves. As a result, Iranians’ access to essential medicine and their right to health is being negatively impacted, and may well worsen if the situation remains unchanged, thereby threatening the health of millions of Iranians.
On several occasions, US officials have indicated that the pain US sanctions are causing for ordinary Iranians is intentional, part of a strategy to compel Iranian citizens to demand their autocratic government to “change behavior” – a recipe for collective punishment that infringes on Iranians’ economic rights. For instance, on February 14, 2019, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told CBS News, “Things are much worse for the Iranian people [with the US sanctions], and we are convinced that will lead the Iranian people to rise up and change the behavior of the regime.” The US Treasury Department itself predicted that US policies would lead to Iran’s “mounting financial isolation and economic stagnation.”
The Trump administration, beyond re-imposing economic sanctions that had been suspended under the JCPOA, has repeatedly targeted Iranian financial institutions. On October 16, 2018, for example, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Treasury Department further restricted Iran’s access to global financial markets by adding about 20 Iranian institutions to the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs) for “supporting military force that recruits and trains child soldiers.”
Then, with the total re-imposition of sanctions suspended under the JCPOA, in November 2018, the US Treasury Department added at least 37 Iranian governmental and privately-owned banks, as well as Iran’s national oil company, to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN) of individuals subject to sanctions. Any company subject to US jurisdiction, US as well as non-US, that engages in transactions with SDNs can be subject to prosecution in the US, creating a significant risk for businesses, banks and global financial institutions essential for facilitating the import of essential medicines and medical equipment into Iran.
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