This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Donald Trump has ordered new sanctions against Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and other officials including eight Revolutionary Guard commanders in the latest step of an escalating pressure campaign.

Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, will also face fresh sanctions in a few days, US officials said. He negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal with the US and other major powers, and has spearheaded Iranian diplomacy since.

Signing an executive order in the Oval Office, Trump called the increased sanctions “hard-hitting”, saying they would deny the supreme leader, his office and and those closely affiliated with him access to key financial resources.

“These measures represent a strong and proportionate response to Iran’s increasingly provocative actions,” Trump said.

“We do not seek conflict with Iran or any other country,” the US president added. “I can only tell you we cannot ever let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

Standing alongside Trump, the treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said the measures would freeze billions of dollars in Iranian assets.

But analysts said their impact on an already heavily-sanctioned country would be limited

“The newly announced Iran sanctions are symbolic,” said Jarrett Blanc, a former senior state department official now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “This is certainly true … because the newly sanctioned people and entities are already insulated from the international financial system.”

Timeline Recent tensions in the Gulf Show Hide Tensions between the US and Iran have soared in 2019, with Washington dispatching warships to the Gulf, and Tehran resuming higher uranium enrichment. The UAE says four commercial ships off its eastern coast 'were subjected to sabotage operations'. Yemen's Houthi rebels launch a drone attack on Saudi Arabia, striking a major oil pipeline and taking it out of service. Saudi Arabia subsequently blames Iran for the attack. A rocket lands near the US embassy in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, without harming anyone. It's not clear who is behind the attack, but after the initial reports, Donald Trump tweets: 'If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!' Saudi Arabia says 26 people were wounded in an attack by Yemen's Houthi rebels on an airport in the kingdom's south-western town of Abha. Two oil tankers near the strategic strait of Hormuz were reportedly attacked in an assault that left one ablaze and adrift. 44 sailors were evacuated from both vessels and the US navy assisted. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards say they have shot down what they called a US 'spy' drone they claim was flying in in the country’s airspace. The US military confirm one of its drones has been taken down, but say it was in international airspace. Donald Trump reportedly gives approval for the US military to launch strikes on Iran in retaliation for the loss of the drone, before pulling back at the last minute. The Iranian and US presidents trade insults, with Hassan Rouhani suggesting that Donald Trump suffered from a “mental disorder” and Trump once more threatening Iran with “obliteration”. Iran summons UK ambassador over an incident off Gibraltar as Royal Marines seize a tanker, Grace 1, the UK suspects of carrying oil to Syria. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the body tasked with verifying Iranian compliance with the terms of the nuclear deal, verifies that Tehran has breached the agreed 3.67% limit for enriched uranium. The UK government says three Iranian boats were warned off by the frigate HMS Montrose after Iranian boats 'attempted to impede' a British oil tanker in strait of Hormuz. Tehran denies involvement. In a major escalation, Iran seizes the Stena Impero, a British-flagged tanker, off its coast. Iranian officials later make it clear that the capture was in retaliation for the capture of the Iranian supertanker Grace 1 earlier in July. Despite US attempts in the courts to prevent it, Gibraltar says it will free oil tanker at centre of the Iran row. Iran gives assurances the oil is not destined for Syria, where selling it would breach international sanctions against Britain accuses Iran of breaching those assurances after Tehran acknowledged the oil had been sold, and the reflagged tanker Adrian Darya 1, previously known as Grace 1, had reached its final destination after the ship was photographed off the coast of Syria.

A treasury statement said eight senior commanders of the navy, aerospace and ground forces components of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) were also being targeted.

“These commanders sit atop a bureaucracy that supervises the IRGC’s malicious regional activities, including its provocative ballistic missile program, harassment and sabotage of commercial vessels in international waters, and its destabilizing presence in Syria,” the statement said.

Trump said he was willing to pursue dialogue with Tehran without preconditions, but the sanctions appear to make such talks even less likely, at least in the short term, particular if the US follows through its threat to sanction Zarif.

The Iranian ambassador to the UN, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, said: “No one in clear mind can have a dialogue with somebody who is threatening you with sanctions as long as that is still there is no way we can have a dialogue.”

Ravanchi instead urged the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, to broker regional talks involving Iran and its neighbours.

Khamenei and his family are said to control a business empire worth tens of billions of dollars.

“The supreme leader’s office has enriched itself at the expense of the Iranian people,” the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said. “It sits atop a vast network of tyranny and corruption that deprives the Iranian people of the freedom and opportunity they deserve.”

Tension has been mounting in the Gulf since Trump withdrew the US from a multilateral deal in which Iran accepted strict limits on its nuclear programme in return for sanctions. Those tensions have culminated in the sabotaging of tankers in the Persian Gulf, and the shooting down of a US drone on Thursday. Trump ordered airstrikes in reprisal, but then cancelled them.

“I think a lot of restraint has been shown by us, and that doesn’t mean we’re going to show it in the future,” Trump said on Monday.

When confirming he had aborted the attack on Iran on Friday, Trump had said he would be imposing new sanctions, but he said the measures against Khamenei and others were not specifically linked to the downing of the Global Hawk drone.

“You could probably add that into this” he said, but added: “This was something that was going to happen anyway.”

Earlier on Monday Brian Hook, the US special envoy on Iran, said he had been holding extensive talks with US allies in the wake of the Gulf of Oman tanker attacks, when two vessels were damaged by explosions. He believed a global coalition to protect shipping was required.

“There have been too many attacks. We could have had an environmental disaster and extensive loss of life due to reckless Iranian provocations,” he said.

Hook said the G20 summit this week in Japan would be a good forum for discussions. As many as 17 countries had been adversely effected by the recent tanker attacks either directly or through crew, insurance or contracts, he said, and an international force might isolate Iran diplomatically as well as make it more perilous for Tehran or its surrogates to mount further attacks.

Iran has denied responsibility for the blasts.

Hook, seen as one of the hawks on Iran inside the US administration, said Tehran faced a choice: “They can either start coming to the negotiating table or they can watch their economy continue to crumble.”

Tensions with Iran have been mounting since Donald Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 nuclear deal last year and began applying pressure on Tehran through economic sanctions.

Trump tweeted that other countries, including China and Japan, should protect their own oil tankers in the Middle East. “Why are we protecting the shipping lanes for other countries … for zero compensation,” he wrote.

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Meanwhile, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, met Saudi Arabia’s king and crown prince for talks on Monday as the US sought to promote an anti-Iran alliance.

“You are a dear friend,” King Salman told Pompeo, who was due to fly to the United Arab Emirates later on Monday for further discussions.

Iran has said it will not enter into discussions until sanctions are lifted. The fresh round of US sanctions is however an attempt to force the Iranian leadership to hold talks with the US. A near-total ban on oil exports is already in place.

A drone strike on an airport in Saudi Arabia by Iranian-aligned Houthi rebels, which left one person dead and 21 injured, will have coloured the mood among Gulf states. It follows another attack on 12 June.

Hook is also to meet officials from Britain, France and Germany this week, but declined to say what pressure he will putting on those countries to follow the US out of the nuclear deal with Iran if, as Tehran has threatened, it breaches its permitted uranium enrichment stock levels on Thursday.

The EU has the choice of either putting the issue in the nuclear deal dispute mechanism, or threatening its own retaliatory measures.

Germany appeared cool towards US talk of building a global coalition against Iran. A foreign ministry spokesman said on Monday that Berlin had “taken note via the media” of Pompeo’s comments and added that “our top aim is and remains a de-escalation of the serious situation”.

Hook claimed the EU was being subjected to nuclear blackmail by Iran, and claimed Iran had rejected the opportunity to take various diplomatic “off-ramps” in the past year.

The UK, France and Germany are urging Tehran to wait for European countries to set up the much-delayed financial mechanism designed to help businesses in Europe trade with Iran, circumventing secondary US sanctions. Iran saw an increase in trade as one of the key benefits of the deal.