Iran sanctions: U.S. and allies may narrow their approach
With Iran's crackdown on protesters intensifying, the Obama administration and allied governments are rethinking their approach to planned sanctions in hopes of focusing the punishments more tightly on the Iranian leadership, U.S. officials say.
Ray Takeyh of the Ploughshares-funded Council on Foreign Relations, who was an administration advisor on Iran earlier this year, agreed that it was now desirable to make the sanctions as "discriminating and selective as possible." But Takeyh said that doing so would be difficult because the world has so little information on the inner workings of the Iranian economy that it is difficult to calculate the social effects of any economic sanction.
The National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) applauded the Obama Administration's policy shift toward targeted sanctions. Last month, NIAC President Trita Parsi testified before the House Oversight Committee's National Security Subcomittee about the negative effects of broad sanctions on the Iranian people's struggle for democracy.
