US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will attempt to convince the international community to increase economic penalties on Iran as punishment for the drone and missile barrage Tehran launched at Israel. Iran’s attack followed Israel’s assassination of several high-ranking officials when Tel Aviv bombed Tehran’s consulate in Damascus.
On Tuesday, Axios reported that the Treasury is preparing new sanctions to levy on Iran and will use an International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting later this week to try to convince other countries to join. “All options to disrupt terrorist financing of Iran continue to be on the table,” she said.
The sanctions would be a response to Iran’s drone and missile attack on Israel. The Iranian attack was a response to Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Syria, which killed 16 people, including seven IRGC officials.
“Treasury will not hesitate to work with our allies to use our sanctions authority to continue disrupting the Iranian regime’s malign and destabilizing activity,” Yellen is set to say during her opening remarks at the IMF conference. “The attack by Iran and its proxies underscores the importance of Treasury’s work to use our economic tools to counter Iran’s malign activity.”
According to Axios, Washington hopes the sanctions will show Tel Aviv that there is a way to punish Tehran without a direct attack on Iran. The war government in Tel Aviv says it will respond to the Iranian attack “clearly and forcefully.”
However, the Washington Post notes that the White House has few options for sanctioning Tehran as the Iranian economy is already one of the most heavily sanctioned. The Post explains that one of Washington’s few options for expanding sanctions on Iran is to blacklist Chinese firms purchasing Iranian crude oil.
Pursuing that path may create more problems for the White House as it will likely upset Beijing and drive up oil prices. The Biden administration is seeking to prevent an increase in gas prices in an election year and has previously asked Ukraine not to attack Russian energy infrastructure.
