Tag: sanctions

US sanctions wife of Brazilian judge who oversaw Bolsonaro prosecution

Posted on by Lone Candle

Trump is using U.S. sanction power to punish those who prosecute people Trump likes politically. This isn’t an act of justice, but an act of defending those who try to coup democracies. He did something similar when he pardoned the January 6th attackers who tried to end U.S. democracy.

“The U.S. announced new sanctions on the wife of Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on Monday, the latest move in the Trump administration’s effort to object to the prosecution of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

The Trump administration has repeatedly targeted de Moraes for overseeing the prosecution of Bolsonaro, who was convicted of organizing a coup to remain in office following his electoral loss to now-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022. A panel of Supreme Court justices, including de Moraes, voted earlier this month to sentence the far-right populist leader, an ally of Trump’s, to a 27-year prison sentence.

…

The Brazilian government called the move “a new attempt of undue interference in Brazilian internal affairs,” accusing the U.S. government of pursuing “the politicization and distortion” of the Magnitsky Act.

“This new attack on Brazilian sovereignty will not achieve its goal of benefiting those who led the failed coup attempt, some of whom have already been convicted by the Supreme Federal Court. Brazil will not bow to this latest aggression,” Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/22/bolsonaro-prosecution-us-sanctions-00575122

Trump’s Syrian Outreach Turns an Enemy Into a Friend

Posted on by Lone Candle

“the U.S. Department of the Treasury issued a three-page waiver lifting almost all economic sanctions on Syria unconditionally.”

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“the Syrian government handed back the old U.S. ambassador’s residence to Thomas Barrack, who serves as both U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria.”

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“a waiver isn’t a permanent end to sanctions. The sanctions imposed by Congress have to be lifted by Congress…Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that it should do exactly that.”

https://reason.com/2025/05/30/trumps-syrian-outreach-turns-an-enemy-into-a-friend/

Will Trump’s Order To Lift U.S. Sanctions on Syria Be Followed?

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Sanctions are a complicated bureaucratic knot to untangle. Aaron Zelin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, warned on X that “people in [Trump’s] own administration are trying to stop it or slow it down severely.” And a Syrian government minister tells Reason that a U.S. delegation has come with a set of “requests” for Syria to fulfill.

The Caesar Civilian Protection Act, passed after Assad had fought a civil war against rebels to a standstill, punishes foreign investment in reconstructing areas under the Syrian government’s control. There is also a general U.S. trade embargo on Syria passed by executive order. And Sharaa himself is a designated terrorist because of his past fighting for Al Qaeda, which he later violently turned against.”

https://reason.com/2025/05/20/will-trumps-order-to-lift-u-s-sanctions-on-syria-be-followed/

Opinion | The Iranian Negotiating Tactic the Trump Administration Doesn’t Get

Posted on by Lone Candle

“sanctions have never made the clerical regime abandon its nuclear ambitions. During Trump’s first term, his “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign did real damage to Iran’s economy. Iran didn’t, however, concede its atomic assets.”

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” Obama’s more friendly outreach only made progress after Washington made a key concession — Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium. The Americans also made a second key concession: allowing Iran to retain a substantial nuclear infrastructure, which could ramp back up at any time. Ali Salehi, the MIT-educated nuclear engineer who was probably the mastermind behind Iran’s dual-use import network, loved the Obama agreement because it would guarantee the Islamic Republic a more advanced, better-financed atomic program that it could grow in the open. It was Obama’s permissive terms much more than the promised financial relief that induced the theocracy to sign the 2015 accord.”

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” Along the way, the clerical regime might agree to dilute its stock of 60 percent-enriched uranium, which is near weapons-grade, or even cap enrichment at a lower level. It would be a flashy concession that won’t fundamentally affect the complexion or the trajectory of Tehran’s nuclear program. The mullahs know that what matters most are protecting its new generation of centrifuges. With much greater efficiency and speed, these machines can enrich uranium to bomb-grade and can be housed in small facilities that are harder to detect.”

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“Even a stringent inspection regime, unless supported by a well-placed human-intelligence network, would find locating these centrifuges an excruciatingly difficult task.”

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/04/19/iran-nuclear-talks-trump-00299466

How America Wasted Its Most Powerful Economic Weapon

Posted on by Lone Candle

“the sanctions failed in one crucial way. The fact that Moscow was blindsided by them suggests it grossly underestimated the severity of the penalties it would face. Although the U.S. and its allies had developed an extensive menu of possible sanctions before the invasion, they never reached consensus on how far they were willing to go. They left Putin to divine the meaning of “the most severe sanctions that have ever been imposed,” and Putin—as he so often did—read Western ambiguity as weakness.

If Biden and other world leaders had committed ahead of time to the actions they would eventually take, they might have had a much better chance of staving off Putin’s invasion. Deterrence can’t work if your adversary underestimates your ability or willingness to act. Putin never saw the sanctions coming—and that was precisely the problem.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/sanctions-antibiotics-160000035.html

Why Economic Sanctions Against Iran Are Backfiring

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Although the United States has the power to seriously disrupt economic life in other countries, the book argues, the consequences don’t always serve American interests. Sanctions hurt the prosperity and political standing of Iran’s pro-American middle class the most. They also make the government more paranoid and remove important incentives to play nice. Everyone seems worse off.

The U.S. has tried to wash its hands of the policy’s consequences for ordinary Iranians, blaming their poverty on domestic “corruption and economic mismanagement” rather than on sanctions. But the data are clear. The Iranian economy was booming from 1988, the end of the country’s war with Iraq, to 2011, the beginning of former President Barack Obama’s intensified sanctions campaign.

Obama’s innovation was secondary sanctions. As the flow of direct American-Iranian trade shrunk, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control punished companies in other countries that dealt with Iran. The Iranian economy became more or less radioactive, as any bank in the world that handled Iranian money and any shipping company that handled Iranian oil risked the wrath of the U.S. government.

Then Obama made a deal, lifting the sanctions in 2015 in exchange for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. Trade resumed and foreign investment flowed back in—until Trump reimposed sanctions in 2018. (Despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, former President Joe Biden continued to enforce the same sanctions.) Iran has since come closer to building a nuclear bomb, and it has had more confrontations with the U.S. military.”

https://reason.com/2025/03/27/how-sanctions-backfire/

Trump admin. lifts sanctions on Israeli settlers involved in attacks on Palestinians

Posted on by Lone Candle

“all sanctions imposed on Israeli settlers involved in violent attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and against organizations involved in the building of illegal West Bank outposts have been lifted and all frozen assets released.”

https://www.axios.com/2025/01/24/trump-lifts-sanctions-israeli-settlers-west-bank

Trump cancels sanctions on Israeli settlers in West Bank

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Trump..rescinded sanctions imposed by the former Biden administration on far-right Israeli settler groups and individuals accused of being involved in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, the new White House website said.”

https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-cancels-sanctions-far-right-israeli-settlers-occupied-west-bank-2025-01-21/