Always more. President Donald Trump announced at a news conference on Wednesday January 8 a new round of economic sanctions against Iran in response to the bombing of two US military bases in Iraq the day before. "The United States will impose them immediately, and these impressive sanctions will continue until Iran decides to change its behavior," said the chief executive.

It was the only hostile action announced by Donald Trump against Iran during a speech which, for the rest, seemed intended to ease the tensions that arose after the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani on Friday January 3. "The American president had to announce something in reaction to the launch of the Iranian missiles," confirms Olivier Dorgans, lawyer at Hughes Hubbard & Reed, an expert in economic sanctions and a specialist in Iran, contacted by France 24.

China and Iranian oil

No one knows, however, what new sanctions the US administration will come out of. Washington has not yet released the content of these measures which, according to the president, must nevertheless be applied "immediately".

Difficult also to imagine what they could be. Donald Trump has continued to increase sanctions against the Iranian regime since his withdrawal in 2018 from the nuclear deal negotiated by his predecessor Barack Obama. "In view of the sanctions gradually reintroduced and added since 2018 - on oil, the financial sector, precious metals, the automobile, aluminum or steel -, there are few sectors that can still be targeted", specifies Olivier Dorgans.

However, "there is still some leeway to increase the pressure," said Sascha Lohmann, specialist in international sanctions and American foreign policy at SWP, the German Institute for International Politics and Security, contacted by France 24. This expert judges that Washington can, again, pull the cord of the secondary sanctions, that is to say those which target the persons - moral or physical - non-American brought to do business with Iran. First, he anticipates increased American pressure "on Chinese companies, banks that import or facilitate the Iranian oil trade".

China remains one of the last countries to source black gold from Tehran. With such a measure, Washington would kill two birds with one stone: to dry up what remains of the Iranian oil windfall and to complicate the task for its great Asian economic rival.

In addition, a few rare sectors - such as tourism, humanitarian aid (sale of medicines) - were not yet in the crosshairs of the United States and could ultimately find themselves, in turn, on the black list.

Tighten repression against breaches of the sanctions regime

But for French lawyer Olivier Dorgans, this is more a matter of posture and "political rhetoric, because because of the measures affecting the Iranian financial system, most foreign companies have already stopped trading with Iran because they cannot not get paid. "

For him, new sanctions - like attacking specific companies or adding the names of Iranian officials to the American blacklist - would only be the tip of the iceberg. He believes that a real tightening of American policy will go through "the deployment of additional means to more easily identify those who contravene sanctions by carrying out more intrusive investigations in countries like Turkey, China and even Arabia. Arabia ".

An approach which would correspond well to the American strategy of isolation of Iran which consists in "making trade with Tehran more expensive than what it can bring back", adds Francesco Giumelli, vice-director of the department of international relations of the he University of Groningen, contacted by France 24. Clearly, Washington hopes that if the efforts to be made to escape American vigilance are too expensive, the possible violators of the sanctions regimes will prefer to abstain.

Signal for countries thinking of the atomic bomb

But why hit a country that is already economically on the ground? None of the experts interviewed believes that this will push Tehran to abandon its nuclear program or "abandon its support for terrorism", as claimed by Donald Trump.

"It is essentially symbolic, and important in the context of the election year which has just started. Donald Trump gives a blow in order to show his electorate that he is acting," said the German political scientist Sascha Lohmann.

But the new economic sanctions also serve "to send a signal to other actors or nations who would be tempted to acquire nuclear weapons. It is a way for American diplomacy to say: you see what it costs are you really ready to pay this price? "says Francesco Giumelli.

This maximalist policy carries, however, risks for the United States. By threatening to slap the fingers of companies around the world that want to trade with Iran, Washington "risks offending some allies and further complicating relations with countries, like China, with which the US administration is not already not on good terms ", judges Sascha Lohmann. For him, these economic sanctions risk pushing other countries to seek alternatives to the dollar for their trade in order to escape the avenging American arm and, thus, "to contribute to a slow decline of the dollar".

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