The Office of Foreign Assets Control, which administers the sanctions, has targeted 18 major Iranian banks — the entire financial sector — which US Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin identified as “an additional avenue that funds the Iranian government’s malign activities.”

Mnuchin vowed sanctions “will continue until Iran stops its support of terrorist activities and ends its nuclear programs.”

This latest punitive measure comes weeks after the US declared a “snapback” of sanctions on Iran that were waived under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a 2015 international deal over Iran’s nuclear program, accusing Tehran of having breached that agreement.

“This new targeting of Iran’s financial sector is very much in line with US President Donald Trump’s maximum pressure policy towards Iran, which is using very creative tools to punish, coerce and deter the clerical regime and get them to come back to the negotiating table,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a non-partisan DC-based think tank, told Arab News.

“The Iranian economy is absolutely not healthy right now. And if this present (US) policy continues, the Iranian revolutionary foreign policy, the policy of resistance to negotiations and foreign pressure, can’t continue.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the sanctions “are directed at the regime and its corrupt officials that have used the wealth of the Iranian people to fuel a radical, revolutionary cause that has brought untold suffering across the Middle East and beyond.”

He added: “The United States continues to stand with the Iranian people, the longest-suffering victims of the regime’s predations.”

But while the US Treasury asserted that the new tranche of sanctions will continue to allow for humanitarian transactions, critics object that they could have a detrimental impact on Iranians’ access to humanitarian resources.

“It’s going to make it even harder for Iran to get ahold of food and medicine,” Barbara Slavin, the director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, told CNN.

“It certainly will bring a lot of people to their knees, but it will not bring down the Islamic Republic, it will just intensify their hatred for the US.”

Ben Taleblu said: “It’s absolutely a legitimate concern. But we have to keep in mind that this is the US intentionally choosing a peaceful tool of punishment, coercion and deterrence rather than a militarized tool to deal with this regime (when) Iran is constantly opting for a non-peaceful, dangerous, and destabilizing tool.

“Concurrent with this economic tool, the US, perhaps more so than any other point in its history, tried to create legal loopholes and more regulations to permit humanitarian trade with Iran. For instance, the Central Bank of Iran, despite having been hit under multiple nonproliferation and terrorism authorities because of how destabilizing it is, was the subject of discussion of a general license by the Treasury Department for certain humanitarian transactions.”

Iran’s mission to the UN accused the US of committing “economic terrorism.”

Ben Taleblu commented: “It’s really a shame when Iran’s leaders, who for 41-plus years now have chosen to put revolutionary interest over national interest and regime ideology over popular welfare, all of a sudden feel confident weaponizing the Iranian people, who have been downtrodden for so many years, as kind of a tool in their larger debate against the policy of Western pressure.”

The new US order will also penalize non-Iranian institutions that do business with the banks, effectively cutting them off from the international financial system.

It gives foreign companies 45 days to wind down their operations in Iran and cease all activities or face “secondary sanctions.”

Foreign banks are likely to be uncomfortable with trading even in the exempted humanitarian areas because of the risk of being penalized.

That is one of the reasons why Europe has always opposed the blanket financial services blacklisting.

Observers argue the latest US actions will deepen tensions with European nations and others over Iran.

“Unfortunately, Europe’s policy is more of the same,” said Ben Taleblu.

“Many international and European leaders stand side-by-side with American leaders condemning the Iranian material support for terrorism, Iranian acts of terrorism abroad, the activities of Tehran’s proxies in the heartland of the Middle East, weapons proliferation, missile testing and transfers as well as Iran’s growing nuclear stockpiles and other violations of international agreements.

“But when rubber hits the road, they’ve done very little about it. The last time the EU (put) sanctions on Iran using missiles was in December 2012.”

The DC-based expert believes, however, that this transatlantic gap in viewing the Iranian threat could be bridged, and that there is an opportunity for Europeans to “put their money where their mouth is on human rights” and refine their sanctions on Iran, particularly after the regime’s execution of wrestler Navid Afkari.

Some circles in Washington fear that the new sanctions would create a more toxic environment in the region and push Iran to retaliate via its proxies in Iraq.

When the US announced the “snapback” last month, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani threatened “a crushing response to the US bullying” and warned of “dangerous consequences.”

Taleblu sees this as Iran’s policy of graduated escalation: “Where the policy you are presenting them with is so damaging they have no other recourse than to scare you into not continuing that policy.

“The sanctions are so effective, Iran is throwing its hands up more and more in the air. I liken this to asphyxiation. The more you get closer to choking them, the more their hands are going to flail up and down as air is leaving their body. So, it is going to produce this kind of reaction. The question from a policy perspective is: Are you able to contain, limit, contest and nullify it?”

The Iran expert emphasized that, in the end, enforcement of the new penalties is key in determining their success in deterring the regime. Otherwise, laxness can lead to “more cheating, violations, and busting, not just by Iran but also by third parties.”

LONDON: In the face of the Middle East’s worst COVID-19 outbreak and economic ruin, Iran’s violent crackdown and persecution of anti-government protesters is an attempt to deter future protests, analysts have said. But in their view, the regime’s disregard for human rights could very well be a sign of weakness rather than strength.

The world was appalled in September at the cruel hanging of Navid Afkari, an Iranian wrestling champion. He sought a fair trial until the end, but was deprived of legal representation and detained alongside his two brothers. The brutal mistreatment meted out to Afkari and his sudden execution were intended to send a clear message to normal Iranians, said Mansoureh Mills, Iran researcher at Amnesty International.

“The Iranian authorities are flexing their muscles,” he told Arab News. “At a time when the general mood among Iranians is shifting away from the death penalty and the world is looking in horror at Iran’s increasing use of it against protesters, dissidents and members of minority groups, the Iranian authorities are using executions, like that of Navid Afkari, as a tool of political control and oppression to instill fear among the public.”

More than 7,000 people were arrested during the 2019 demonstrations alone and at least 30 other protesters have already received death sentences, wrote Iranian democracy activists Shirin Ebadi, Abbas Milani and Hamid Moghadam in a recent opinion piece, titled “Iran deserves a red card for its human rights abuses,” for US news website The Hill.

A report released by the rights group Amnesty International in September detailed the catalog of horrors that detained protesters face in Iranian prisons. Prisoners spared the death penalty were regularly subjected to torture, including “beatings, floggings, electric shocks, stress positions and sexual violence,” the report said.

Tehran’s treatment of women’s rights campaigners has been particularly harsh. For example, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court sentenced 57-year-old Nasrin Sotoudeh, a leading Iranian human rights lawyer, to 38 years in jail and 148 lashes on charges of “disrupting public order and colluding against the system” for her work defending the rights of women. Amnesty has called the sentence an “outrageous injustice.”

Since 2009, the regime has imprisoned or attempted to prosecute at least 60 lawyers for defending political prisoners, according to Human Rights Watch. The regime is also accused of trumping up spy charges against foreign visitors to effectively hold them hostage, including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian dual national jailed in 2016, and British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who has been detained since 2018.

As COVID-19 swept through Iran’s overcrowded jails earlier this year, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was temporarily released from the notorious Evin prison and placed under effective house arrest with her parents in Tehran, where she awaits fresh charges. Moore-Gilbert was recently moved from Evin to Qarchak, which is widely regarded as the worst women’s prison in Iran, known for its extrajudicial killings, torture and other rights violations.

Even the families of dissidents outside Iran are unsafe. Masih Alinejad, an outspoken US-based critic of the Islamic Republic, has said her family inside Iran has been regularly targeted by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Her brother was imprisoned and tortured, while her mother has faced a pattern of harassment. At one point, her mother “threatened to pour gasoline on herself and set herself on fire” during a confrontation with IRGC officers, Alinejad said.

This mistreatment of protesters, Mills said, can be directly linked to the declining economic and political control that Tehran exerts over the population.

Since the beginning of 2020, the value of the Iranian rial has plummeted to new lows each passing month. In October, it dropped to its lowest-ever value. Worse yet for the regime, the US is moving forward with the re-imposition of “snapback” sanctions lifted as part of the nuclear deal. Meanwhile, with pressure mounting on European countries to take a harder line against Iran, one of the regime’s few remaining economic lifelines could soon vanish.

“Whenever the political and economic situation in the country declines, the Iranian authorities clamp down even further on the public and erode human rights even more — Tehran has shown it will do everything in its power to crush protests and silence dissent,” Mills said.

Iran’s spiraling economic crisis could herald yet more repression and violence by Tehran in an attempt to control the volatile domestic situation, Mills added. But far from dampening the appetite of ordinary Iranians for regime change, he believes widespread repression and the flippant use of execution have, and will continue to, enrage the population.

“The anger at Navid Afkari’s execution among Iranians is palpable,” he told Arab News. “Since his death, graffiti has appeared in Iran’s streets criticizing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and calling for revenge for his killing, and people are urging protests against his execution.”

Mills’s prediction of unrest and anti-regime anger is echoed by Ali Safavi, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an Iranian dissident group that views itself as Iran’s government-in-waiting.

Safavi says much like the protests of 2018 and November 2019, which were both triggered by economic grievances among the Iranian populace and morphed into anti-regime movements, the deteriorating economic and social foundations in Iran will catalyze further uprising.

In trying to prevent this, Safavi said, the regime is “caught between a rock and a hard place. While it needs to repress and execute to survive, it is fully cognizant of its fragile and vulnerable state, and is very worried about the massive social backlash of executions.”

The case of dissident campaigner Shahla Jahanbin epitomizes the regime’s problem. She penned a letter to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei earlier this year imploring him to resign. In response, Jahanbin was sentenced to nearly four years in jail and forced to return to prison just months after receiving back surgery. But her cruel treatment at the hands of the Islamic Revolutionary Court has failed to suppress the anger of Iran’s youth against the regime — it only fuels it, Safavi said.

“The regime is terrified of the eruption of another uprising,” he added. But Tehran’s nightmare scenario may already be playing out. Footage obtained by Arab News shows unidentified individuals setting fire to the entrance of the Shiraz court where Afkari was handed his death sentence. A later video also shows an explosive device detonating in the heavily fortified entrance to Lorestan province’s central prison administration office.

Both attacks took place at night and caused only material damage, but were met with an immediate deployment of security forces. Safavi said this demonstrates the fear of the regime and its vulnerability in the face of the Iranian public.

The only way out of the cycle of repression, public backlash and more repression, according to Bob Blackman, a UK Conservative Party MP, is for the international community to send a clear message to Iran that “we are not going to put up with their human rights abuses.”

He told Arab News that European countries must abandon their attempts to appease Iran by rescuing the nuclear deal, and instead follow in the US administration’s footsteps with new sanctions against the regime. “We have to be strong and firm about this,” he said.

Blackman also noted the uncertainty and potential unrest caused by Iran’s sky-high coronavirus death toll — over 20,000 by official accounts, though many suspect the true figure may be far higher. He said concerns over personal safety amid the pandemic may be discouraging Iranians from taking to the streets against the government, but this reluctance to gather in protest will not last forever.

The issue in Iran, Blackman said, is increasingly a question of how much abuse normal Iranians are willing to put up with in their daily lives, and what they will resort to when it becomes too much to bear.

“What we do know is that the Shah (Iran’s pre-revolutionary ruler) was deposed after a long campaign of civil disobedience — it took a long time,” Blackman added.

“The anti-regime protests in Iran that continue to take place reflect the genuine sentiments of the Iranian people. These protests are a continuation of those beginning in November and proceeding through December, reforming again and again in the face of harsh repression.”

The consensus among rights groups, politicians and Iranians abroad is that Tehran’s executions and violent repression create a vicious cycle of more unrest, more human rights abuses, and therefore, more unrest.

Blackman said this cycle will continue until the international community abandons its strategy of appeasement and accepts the reality of the situation: The Islamic Republic cannot be trusted and will not change.

The general consensus among Iran analysts is that human rights abuses, executions and instability will continue until Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani and the IRGC’s grip on Iran is replaced by a representative and democratically elected government.

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• Twitter: @CHamillStewart

DAMASCUS: Dozens of fires that ravaged parts of Syria and Lebanon in recent days were brought under control on Sunday, authorities in the two countries said.
In Syria, blazes fueled by high temperatures broke out Friday in the provinces of Homs, Tartus and Latakia, where at least three people died, according to the health ministry.
Several families had to flee residential areas near the fires, according to media reports.
Syrian Agriculture Minister Mohammed Hassan Qatana said “a total of 156 fires” had broken out, most of them in Latakia and Tartus in the west of the country, state news agency SANA reported.
He said they were brought under control on Sunday.
SANA reported that firefighters and civil defense personnel backed by army helicopters were still active in the areas.
Latakia governor Ibrahim Khader Al-Salem, quoted by SANA, said that “civil defense teams, supported by army units and the population, are now in control of all the fires in the province.”
Syrian Prime Minister Hussein Arnous said recovery work was underway, along with efforts to support those who had been forced to flee their homes.
In neighboring Lebanon, more than 100 forest fires that had raged since Thursday were also completely under control, a civil defense source told AFP.
Authorities have yet to reveal the full extent of the damage from the fires in both countries.
But SANA published pictures showing burnt trees, including olives that had been ready for harvest.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency said swathes of forests were devastated and pine trees destroyed.
In Israel, fires fueled by the heatwave were brought under control overnight Friday-Saturday, the firefighting service said.
“After more than 30 hours of firefighting, we have brought the main fires under control… (but) we remain vigilant,” the fire service there said in a statement on Saturday.

DUBAI: The UAE on Sunday recorded 1,096 new COVID-19 cases and two deaths.
The Ministry of Health and Prevention said the total number of cases since the pandemic began has reached 106,229, while the death toll rose to 445.
The ministry also said 1,311 cases recovered from COVID-19 over the previous 24 hours, bringing the total to 97,284.
Meanwhile, Dubai Health Authority met with police and education chiefs to discuss the impact of the pandemic and the level of intervention taken by the authority to stem its spread.
Dubai Economy issued fines to six businesses and a warning to one shop for not adhering to anti-COVID-19 measures.
Sharjah Police said they issued 5,432 fines in September to people violating the restrictions.
“The most common violations were not wearing masks and failing to comply with social distancing in closed public places like shopping malls or in public transport,” the police statement said.
Elsewhere, Kuwait recorded 548 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total to 111,116. The death toll reached 658 after three new fatalities were registered.

تعلن #وزارة_الصحة⁩ عن تأكيد إصابة 548 حالة جديدة، وتسجيل 546 حالة شفاء، و 3 حالات وفاة جديدة بـ ⁧#فيروس_كورونا_المستجدّ⁩ COVID-19 ، ليصبح إجمالي عدد الحالات 111,116 حالة pic.twitter.com/yYe5EnErLP

— وزارة الصحة – الكويت (@KUWAIT_MOH) October 11, 2020

Oman’s health ministry said the total number of cases had reached 105,890 and the death toll stands at 1,038.

#Statement No. 202
October 11, 2020 pic.twitter.com/WLqZYBz0Ad

— وزارة الصحة – عُمان (@OmaniMOH) October 11, 2020

In Bahrain, two deaths were reported, bringing the death toll to 275, while 327 new infected cases were confirmed.

Out of 9086 COVID-19 tests carried out on 11 October 2020, 327 new cases have been detected among 104 expatriate workers, 214 new cases are contacts of active cases, and 9 are travel related. There were 441 recoveries from #COVID19, increasing total recoveries to 71249 pic.twitter.com/FYNBnyNq4s

— وزارة الصحة | مملكة البحرين (@MOH_Bahrain) October 11, 2020

NICOSIA: Voters in the Turkish-held north of Cyprus, a breakaway state recognized only by Ankara, voted Sunday for a new leader amid charges of interference by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The presidential vote in the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was held amid heightened tensions on the divided island and in the wider eastern Mediterranean.
The election in the TRNC pits the incumbent and favorite, Mustafa Akinci, who supports the eventual reunification of Cyprus as an EU member, against nationalist Ersin Tatar, who is backed by Erdogan.
“This election is crucial for our destiny,” Akinci said after casting his ballot, likening the effect of alleged Turkish political meddling to the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on public health.
The vote comes three days after Turkish troops angered the Republic of Cyprus, an EU member, and many Turkish Cypriots by reopening public access to the fenced-off seaside ghost town of Varosha for the first time since Turkish forces invaded the north in 1974.
That move sparked demonstrations in the majority Greek-speaking Republic of Cyprus, which exercises its authority over the island’s southern two thirds, separated from the north by a UN-patrolled buffer zone.
Almost 200,0000 of the about 300,000 residents are registered to vote in the TRNC, which was established after the north of the island was occupied by Turkey in reaction to a coup to annex Cyprus to Greece.
One voter, Esat Tulek, aged 73 and a retired public servant, said the election was important because “we’re actually choosing the president who will be negotiating with the Greek Cypriots about the future of Cyprus.”
The election comes amid tensions in the eastern Mediterranean over the planned exploitation of hydrocarbons between Turkey on the one hand, and Greece as well as its close ally Cyprus on the other.
Erdogan announced on Tuesday, together with Tatar, the partial reopening of Varosha, a beachside resort that once drew Hollywood stars before it was abandoned by its Greek-Cypriot inhabitants during the Turkish invasion.
The move to allow visitors back into the abandoned and overgrown area was condemned by Akinci and other candidates, who saw it as Turkish interference in the election.
It was also heavily criticized by the Republic of Cyprus, the European Union and the United Nations, whose peacekeepers monitor the 180-kilometer (112-mile) buffer zone across the island.
Kemal Baykalli, founder of the non-government group Unite Cyprus Now, told AFP that “the main issue of this election is how we will define our relationship with Turkey.”
Eleven candidates are in the running, and the front-runner is Akinci, 72, a Social Democrat who favors loosening ties with Ankara, which has earned him the hostility of Erdogan.
“There are two situations that are not normal,” Akinci said after voting. “One is about our health, there is a pandemic.
“And the second one is our political health, communal health, and I’m talking here about the intervention of Turkey,” which he accused of using their facilities in TRNC “like an election office.”
The negotiations aimed at reunification stalled during Akinci’s term of office, notably on the question of the withdrawal of tens of thousands of Turkish soldiers stationed in the TRNC.
Turkey supports the nationalist Tatar, 60, currently “prime minister” of the breakaway north, who on Sunday insisted to reporters that “the TRNC and its people form a state.”
“We deserve to live on the basis of equal sovereignty,” Tatar said to applause from his supporters.
Yektan Turkyilmaz, a researcher at the Berlin-based Forum Transregionale Studien, said many Turkish Cypriots felt “wounded in their honor and identity” by what they considered to be interference from Ankara.
Another voter, Aysin Demirag, a 59-year-old yoga teacher, said the Varosha reopening, “under pressure from Turkey, organized as a show with days to go before the elections, was really a bad decision.”
The election is being held amid an economic crisis, deepened by the pandemic, which has largely shuttered the tourism sector and led to the closure of Ercan airport in north Nicosia and the crossing points to the south of the island.
Voting at 738 polling stations, held with precautions against the spread of COVID-19, was to close at 6:00 p.m. (1500 GMT), with result due to be released in the evening.
If no candidate wins at least 50 percent of the vote, the two leading candidates will face off in a second round on October 18.