The Trump administration has announced sanctions on companies and individuals suspected of involvement in Iran’s missile programme and its support for foreign armed groups, warning there will be more pressure on Tehran to come.
Earlier on Friday Donald Trump had accused Iran of “playing with fire”.
“They don’t appreciate how ‘kind’ President Obama was to them. Not me!” he said in an early morning tweet.
The sanctions announced on Friday targeted on a dozen companies and 13 individuals, including Chinese firms suspected of supplying parts used in Iran’s missile development programme. The measures were invoked in response to a January missile test by Iran and the country’s support for Houthi rebels in Yemen.
“The Trump administration will no longer tolerate Iran’s provocations that threaten our interests,” Trump’s national security advisor, Michael Flynn, said in a statement. “The days of turning a blind eye to Iran’s hostile and belligerent actions toward the United States and the world community are over.”
A senior administration official described the measures as “initial steps” while a broader review of Iran policy was under way.
“Iran has a choice to make,” the official said. “We are going to continue to respond to their behaviour in an ongoing way at an appropriate level, to continue to pressure them to change their behaviour.”
Iran said it would retaliate with its own blacklist of American nationals and companies it said gave support to terrorists.
“The Islamic Republic will proportionately and reciprocally confront any action that targets the Iranian people’s interests,” the foreign ministry said.
Sanctions experts said the new measures appeared to be in line with the Obama administration’s approach of incrementally expanding sanctions as procurement and influence networks are uncovered, but a senior Trump administration official said the decision to impose the new sanctions had been triggered by the 29 January Iranian test of a medium-range ballistic missile.
The sanctions were also declared to be in retaliation for a Houthi attack on a Saudi warship on 31 January. In a statement on Friday, Flynn referred to the Houthis as one of Iran’s “proxy terrorist groups”, although the Yemeni Shia militia is not designated by the state department as terrorist. It has fought a long-running insurgency in and seized the capital Sana’a by early 2015, triggering a full-scale war against the Yemeni president, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, and a Saudi-led coalition supporting him.
The people and companies targeted in the new sanctions list are suspected of being parts of networks that import dual-use items that have been used in Iran’s nuclear programme, or transfer funds abroad for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to foreign armed groups. The measures do not reimpose any sanctions that were lifted as a result of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran.
“It is an appropriate response and consistent with the approach that the Obama administration took in dealing with missiles and terror,” said Elizabeth Rosenberg, a former senior sanctions adviser at the treasury department. “It doesn’t look that it is a major departure. What we see is a page from the playbook we know.”
Tyler Cullis, legal fellow at the National Iranian American Council, said: “Trump has imposed targeted sanctions aimed at low-level individuals and entities alleged to be involved with Iran’s ballistic missile programme. These sanctions are intended to evidence US pushback without sacrificing the nuclear accord. I wouldn’t have expected a President Clinton to act any differently.”
US officials said that the missile test was “inconsistent” with UN security council resolution 2231, which endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal and “calls on” Iran not to develop or test missiles “capable of delivering nuclear weapons” but does not ban such activity outright.
The Iranian defence minister, Hossein Dehghan, has insisted that the 29 January test did not violate the resolution and declared: “We will not allow foreigners to interfere in our defence affairs.”
A senior administration official insisted on Friday that the tested missile was nuclear-capable.
“Those are ballistic missiles that can travel a certain distance and carry a certain payload and this ballistic missile falls within that parameter,” the official said.
Michael Elleman, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said it was not clear what Iran had launched, but said most likely it was a Shahab-3 medium-range ballistic missile based on the North Korean Nodong missile, and which was first tested in 1998.
Trump’s attempt to shock and awe both allies and adversaries in his first two weeks in office has deepened global uncertainty as Trump has taken an abrasive approach to diplomacy from Australia to Mexico.
Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said the administration was in the midst “of a full review of all US policies towards Cuba”, with a focus on its human rights policies, as part of a commitment to such rights for citizens throughout the world.
It also emerged that more than 100,000 visas may have been revoked as a result of Trump’s fiercely contentious ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries. The number was revealed by a government attorney during a lawsuit brought on behalf of two Yemeni brothers who arrived at Dulles International Airport near Washington on Saturday, only to be put on a return flight to Ethiopia.
But the state department contradicted the attorney’s figure, saying that fewer than 60,000 visas had been cancelled under Trump’s order.
In a highly provocative move last month, Trump signed an executive order that affects people holding passports from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, and also halts temporarily the entry of refugees into the country. The White House contends the moves are necessary for national security but Democratic attorneys general in several states have called them unconstitutional.
In a separate case, a federal judge in Detroit ruled that US green card holders should not be affected by Trump’s travel ban following a suit by the Arab-American Civil Rights League. The nonprofit argued in US district court that the president’s executive action is unconstitutional and targets immigrant communities.
Criticism of the White House’s misrepresentation of the issue intensified after Kellyanne Conway, counselor to Trump, was forced to issue a correction after blaming two Iraqi refugees for a massacre that never happened.
Conway cited the fictitious “Bowling Green massacre” in an interview in which she backed the travel ban. Interviewed by Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball programme on Thursday evening, Conway compared the executive order issued by Trump in his first week in the White House to what she described as a six-month ban imposed by his predecessor, Barack Obama.
This claim has been debunked by commentators who have pointed out that the 2011 action was a pause on the processing of refugees from Iraq after two Iraqi nationals were arrested over a failed attempt to send money and weapons to al-Qaida in Iraq.
Conway told Matthews: “I bet it’s brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalised and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre. Most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered.”
The two Iraqi men arrested in 2011 did live in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and are currently serving life sentences for federal terrorism offences. But there was no massacre, nor were they accused of planning one. The US Department of Justice, announcing their convictions in 2012, said: “Neither was charged with plotting attacks within the United States.”
After a barrage of mockery on social media, Conway tweeted on Friday: “I meant to say ‘Bowling Green terrorists’ as reported here,” and she linked to a 2013 news report about the men.
Trump met business leaders at the White House and promised to roll back financial regulations that resulted from the 2007-08 financial crisis. He was set to issue directives targeting the 2010 Dodd-Frank law on Wall Street reform, although only Congress can rewrite it.
The Department of Labor announced that the economy added a total of 227,000 jobs in January, while wages rose by 2.5% over the last year. Democrats hailed it as an “emphatic capstone” on the economic legacy of Barack Obama.
House Democrats will gather for a conference in Baltimore next week, strategising a way forward for the party after Trump’s stunning election defeat of Hillary Clinton and the helter skelter start to his presidency. They are under pressure from an energetic base to shift to the left and, for example, oppose Trump’s supreme court nominee Neil Gorsuch at all costs.