Europe Ponders Fresh Sanctions On Iran

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada has designated Iran's IRGC leadership, adding that “we will restrict financial transactions with the Islamic Republic of Iran associated with the IRGC and the proxies that support them. These actions are some of the strongest measures anywhere against Iran.”

Trudeau also told Iranian women, from schoolgirls to grandmothers, "We stand with you, and we will continue to do so." He added, “To the strong, resilient, and proud Iranian Canadian community, we hear your voices. We heard your calls for action.”

“We’re using the most powerful tools at our disposal to crack down on Iran's brutal regime. We'll be pursuing a listing of IRGC leadership under our Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, making over 10,000 senior IRGC members inadmissible to Canada,” he said.

International reactions to Iran’s crackdown on ongoing popular protests are growing, with more and more countries condemning Tehran’s behavior, summoning envoys, or adopting resolutions.

He also touched upon the issue of money-laundering and the IRGC’s vast sway across the Middle East, saying, “We intend to massively expand targeted sanctions under Special Economic Measures Act to hold to account those people most responsible for Iran's egregious behavior. We are expanding Canada’s capacity to fight money laundering and illicit financial activity, as well as to crack down on foreign interference to protect Iranian Canadians and other communities in Canada.”

Deputy premier and finance minister Chrystia Freeland said, “The IRGC leadership are terrorists, the IRGC is a terrorist organization. And today by listing the Iranian regime and the IRGC leadership under Canada's Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, we're recognizing these facts."

However, the Canadian government did not officially designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization as many were expecting. Asked about why the government has refrained from such a step, Trudeau avoided a direct answer, saying that his government has found the best legal provisions to put strong sanctions, similar to measures implemented during the Bosnian and Rwandan conflicts.

On October 3, Canada imposed new sanctions on Iran under the Special Economic Measures Act, in response to gross human rights violations, including its systematic persecution of women and in particular, the egregious actions committed by Iran’s so-called ‘Morality Police’ and its leadership. Canada also implemented sanctions against Iran’s security and intelligence apparatus for its destabilizing activities across the region and the regime’s propaganda and misinformation apparatus.

The US State Department also said on Friday that it would continue to coordinate with its allies and partners on how to respond to Iran's "bloody crackdown" on protesters and its "state-sponsored violence" against women.

Earlier on Friday, 30 Conservative members of UK Houses of Commons and Lords stressed that the prospect of change in Iran has never been this strong, urging the UK government to recognize the right of the Iranian people to defend themselves by any means necessary and to overthrow the regime.

The European Parliament adopted a resolution Thursday condemning Mahsa Amini’s killing and voiced support for protests demanding change in the country.

The resolution instructed all member states “to use the mechanisms envisaged in the EU Guidelines on Human Rights Defenders to support and protect these individuals [activists, protesters], in particular women’s rights defenders and EU-Iranian dual nationals.”

US Envoy for Iran Rob Malley told NPR that "What US wants is a government in Iran that respects people's fundamental rights. It's not a policy of regime change. It's a policy of backing people who're protesting peacefully, because they want to be able not to wear a headscarf yet face oppressive system."

The bank’s arguments, most recently presented to the court August, go back tocharges brought by New York federal prosecutors in 2019. The bank first went to the Supreme Court in January and was supported in submissions made in June by the governments of Pakistan and Azerbaijan.

Halkbank rejected arguments submitted by the US Justice Department July dismissing its claim to immunity. The bank’s submission cited a 1976 statute, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, various court decisions, as well as “longstanding principles of international law… comity between nations…[and] centuries of this Court’s precedent.”

The case raised in 2019 alleged the bank had been involved in helping Iran transfer proceeds from oil and gas exports, in violation of US and UN sanctions. Prosecutors gave a figure of $19 billion, with at least $1 billion transferred through the US financial system. While US action against third parties dealing with Iran has no standing in international law, any involvement ‘evading’ US unilateral sanctions can be deemed a violation of US law.

Both the trial judge and an appeals court – the latter in October 2021 – have rejected Halkbank’s case that it holds sovereign immunity as a state-owned body. Judgement in the case now awaits a Supreme Court ruling.

The 2019 charges followed the 2016 arrest of Reza Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian gold trader. Zarrab’s father reportedly knew former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, while Zarrab himself had links to those close to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as well as to allies of President Donald Trump, including members of his administration. Zarrab was repatriated to Turkey in 2019.

Based partly on testimony from Zarrab, Mehmet Hakan Atilla, a Halkbank executive, was arrested in 2017, convicted in 2018 on several sanctions-related counts while acquitted of money laundering, sentenced to 32 months imprisonment, and released 2019.

‘Ugly unlawful’

Erdogan called the charges against the bank “ugly, unlawful,” and the case has long strained Washington-Ankara relations, which have been hit recently by the US ending an arms embargo on the divided island of Cyprus and pressing Turkey to cut economic links with Russia over the Ukraine crisis.

Turkey opposes unilateral US sanctions against Iran. Meeting Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Ankara in June, foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also reiterated Ankara’s support for reviving the 2015 nuclear deal and for co-operation with Tehran against ‘terrorism,’ a reference to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its Iranian offshoot Pejak.

Iran-Turkey trade fell from around $9.8 billion in 2018, the year the US left the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement and imposed third-party ‘maximum pressure’ sanction, to $3.4 billion in 2020, but appears now to be increasing.

Washington think tank The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which advocates sanctions against Iran and opposes the 2015 nuclear agreement, has argued that “prosecuting Halkbank to the full extent of the law” shows “Washington’s commitment to denying impunity to Tehran’s accomplices [and] would encourage other foreign banks to comply with US sanctions…”

"France's action at heart of EU ... (is) to target those responsible for the crackdown by holding them responsible for their acts," Catherine Colonna told lawmakers in parliament, adding that the EU was looking at asset freezes and travel bans.

The bloc last agreed human rights sanctions on Tehran in 2021. No Iranians had been added to that list since 2013, however, as the bloc has shied away such measures in the hope of reviving a nuclear accord with Iran after the United States withdrew in 2018. Those talks have now stalled.

It currently has an array of sanctions on about 90 Iranian individuals which have been renewed annually every April.

Colonna suggested the new measures could target repressive regime figures who send their children to live in Western countries. Diplomats say the measures are expected to be rubber-stamped at an EU foreign ministers meeting on October 17.

The United States and Canada have already imposed sanctions on Iran's morality police over allegations of abuse of Iranian women, saying they held the unit responsible for the death of a 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody.

President Joe Biden issued a statement on Mondaysaying he is “gravely concerned about reports of the intensifying violent crackdown on peaceful protestors in Iran, including students and women, who are demanding their equal rights and basic human dignity.” He added that Washington will impose more sanctions this week on certain Iranian officials.

Amini, a Kurdish woman, was arrested by the morality police in Tehran for wearing "unsuitable attire" and fell into a coma while in detention. The authorities have said they would investigate the cause of her death, but so far, no police officer has been named, held responsible or arrested.

CT scans obtained by Iran International showed that Amini received hard blows to her head causing a fracture to her skull and brain damage. Hospital staff told us that she had no hope of being revived when she was brought in on September 13. She died three days later September 16.

Her death triggered nationwide protests that quickly turned into anti-regime unrest with mostly young protesters calling for an end to the Islamic Republic, freedom for women and equality.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Monday gave his full backing to security forces confronting protests ignited by the death of Amini, comments that could herald a harsher crackdown to quell unrest more than two weeks since she died.

Protesters have been chanting “Death to Khamenei” and “Death to the dictator” ever since demonstrations began.

He blamed the United States and Israel for “planning” the protests and claimed Iranian people did not initiate the unrest. Iran often blames “enemies” for similar incidents.

Iran Human Rights, a Norway-based group, has said nearly 150 people have been killed. Iranian authorities have not given a death toll, while saying many members of the security forces have been killed by "rioters and thugs backed by foreign foes".

Around 50 people were gunned down by security forces just in the Sunni Baluch populated region of southeast Iran near Pakistan since Friday according to local sources.

With reporting by Reuters

Foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani spoke a day after the US denied any frozen resources had been released or that a prisoner swap had been agreed with Washington. Iranian state media had suggested that an agreement had been reached on an exchange – Iranian-Americans held in Tehran for Iranians jailed in the US over sanctions violations – and that Washington would waive punitive action against South Korean banks repatriating $7 billion in Iranian assets.

Hopes for a prisoner swap had been raised after Stephane Dujarric, a United Nations spokesman, said Saturday that Iran would allow Bagher Namazi, 85, to leave the country for medical treatment and would release his son Siamak from detention. Siamak Namazi’s lawyer confirmed his client’s furlough to Reuters news agency. Siamak Namazi has been in prison since 2015 for “collaborating with hostile governments,” while his father was detained in 2016 after going to Iran to secure his son’s release.

But Kanaani said Monday that decisions over the Namazis were purely ‘humanitarian.’ While denying any arrangement over the funds in Korea, the US spokesman confirmed Sunday that Washington was continuing “indirect discussions on possible humanitarian arrangements to facilitate the urgent release of the remaining US citizens.” The spokesman said there was “nothing further to announce at this time.”

‘Information therapy’ to boost currency?

In Tehran, Shargh daily was skeptical in an analysis published Monday. The reformist newspaper noted that earlier Iranian claims over the imminent release of funds in South Korea, going back to the last year in office of President Hassan Rouhani, were seen by “many experts and economists” as ‘information therapy’ to bolster the flagging rial in currency markets.

Citing the generally conservative Fars news agency to support its contention, Shargh suggested the latest news had helped rally the currency from 340,000 to 320,000 against the US dollar.

Shargh went on to argue that Iran’s decision over the Namazis might also be intended to “paint a better picture [internationally] in the field of human rights” given “the current negative atmosphere against Iran due to the death of Mehsa Amini,” the women who died September 16 after being detained by morality police.

Shargh also noted Saudi Arabia’s release Sunday of Khalil Dardman, an Iranian detained on pilgrimage, which it said might lead to a “positive regional atmosphere centered on the restoration of relations.” Tehran and Riyadh have been in Iraq-brokered talks since April 2021 over reopening embassies six years after relations were severed following the Saudis executing leading Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

Qatar’s ‘main mission’

The newspaper argued that the reported role of Qatar in mediating over the Namazis reflected Doha’s efforts over “its main mission, which is the revival of the JCPOA, by solving marginal disputes…”

Both the US and Iran publicly argue that a possible prisoner exchange is unrelated to efforts to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement. Both say any talks take place in parallel. But Shargh welcomed the Namazi move as at least preventing “the current situation of negotiations from worsening” given the US had put “the brakes on negotiations with Iran on the eve of the Knesset elections [in Israel, November 1]…as well as the [US November 8] mid-term elections of the Congress.”

Apparently reflecting Tehran’s desire to keep JCPOA talks alive, the official news agency IRNA ran a report Sunday that Iran and the US had exchanged messages, mediated by Qatar, during the recent United Nations General Assembly in New York.

But even with the Namazis’ release, Iran’s arrest of nine foreigners allegedly involved in current unrest is a further complication. Alberto Piperno, father of Alessia Piperno, an Italian woman, said Sunday he had received a telephone call from his daughter in jail. Alberto posted on social media that Alessia, a blogger, was a “solitary traveler” who had been in Iran two months.

Senators Chris Coons (D-Del.) -- the co-chair of the Senate Human Rights Caucus -- and James Lankford (R-Okla.) introduced the resolution on Thursday condemning the death of the Iranian woman, whose killing earlier in Sptember by Iran’s “morality police” sparked nationwide protests. The resolution urges the Islamic Republic to end its “systemic persecution of women."

“This resolution sends a clear message that the United States stands behind the rights of women and peaceful protesters in Iran and reaffirms that our commitment to human rights, women’s rights, and democratic freedoms is core to our values and foreign policy,” Coons said.

Senior members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have also voiced support for the popular protests in Iran.

Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who is the chairman Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Thursday that Iranian protesters should know that people in the US and everywhere in the world see and praise their courage against the violent, oppressive and misogynistic regime of Iran, expressing hope to see a free Iran that is in peace with its neighbors and people.

Jim Risch (R-Idaho) ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the protests indicate Iranians’ desire for a free and peaceful country, adding that the Biden administration's blind pursuit of a new nuclear deal will only empower the regime.