UK announces plan for new Iran sanctions regime

Chenar Chalak

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - UK's foreign secretary on Thursday announced their intention to create a new sanctions regime against Iran which will grant the UK greater powers to further counter Tehran’s “hostile” and “destabilizing” activities in the UK and the rest of the world.

James Clevery, UK’s foreign secretary, said that Iran has increased its efforts to kill and kidnap British or UK-based individuals over the past 18 months, reporting at least 15 “credible threats” from the Iranian regime made towards the individuals which Tehran perceives to be “enemies of the regime.”

“The cowardly attacks planned by the Iranian regime on British soil violate the most elementary rules of diplomatic relations between states,” said Cleverly.

The new sanctions regime would empower the UK to target key decision makers in Iran through setting new criteria for entities that can be sanctioned. Individuals can be sanctioned based on their involvement in Tehran’s efforts to undermine peace and security, efforts to proliferate weapons technology, efforts to undermine democracy, and other hostile behavior towards the UK and its partners.

Clevery said that they expect to introduce the legislation for the new regime in the parliament later this year, but stressed that the decision to proceed with the measure remains in the Iranian regime’s hands if it were to change its behavior.

The foreign secretary also announced that they had imposed new sanctions on 13 Iranian individuals and entities, including senior officials accused of human rights violations in the Islamic republic’s prisons and others responsible for enforcing social norms and repressing freedoms.

“The announcements that I made today, added to the pre-existing sanctions packages, give us a powerful tool of deterrence for Iranian behavior that we intend to utilize fully if Iran’s behavior does not change,” he added.

The Iranian foreign ministry later in the day summoned Elizabeth Marsh, Chargé d'Affaires of the British Embassy in Tehran, protesting the UK’s “interventionist” remarks and threatening to take proportionate countermeasures if London’s “unacceptable” approaches were to continue.

There are a number of dual and foreign nationals being held in Iranian prisons on charges of spying for foreign governments with rights groups accusing Tehran of using them as bargaining chips to gain concessions from world powers.

Iran in January carried out the death sentence of Iranian-British dual national Alireza Akbari on charges of spying for the United Kingdom’s intelligence agency and threatening the Islamic republic’s internal and external security.