US President Trump signs hard-hitting sanctions on Iran and its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei
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US President Donald Trump signed and enacted the document which impose hard-hitting new sanctions on Iran, including on the office of the country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
BBC reports that Trump said the additional sanctions were in response to the shooting down of a US drone and “many other things”.
He added that they would “continue to increase pressure on Tehran”, saying “never can Iran have a nuclear weapon”.
The new sanctions deny Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his office access to key financial resources, according to NBC News. Khamenei’s assets are not spared from the new measures. In addition, the U.S. is sanctioning specific military leaders who were responsible for shooting down the US drone last week, according to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
Tensions between the U.S. and Iran have grown since Trump pulled the U.S. out of the multilateral Iran nuclear deal that had been brokered during the Obama administration. Some sanctions that had been lifted under that deal snapped back into effect after the U.S. pulled out.
While Trump called the sanctions a “strong and proportionate response,” neither he nor Mnuchin would offer exact details about what the retaliation was for. Trump said, “this was something that was going to happen anyway.”
Mnuchin said “some of this was in the works, some of this was a result of recent activities. I’m not going to identify which is which.”
