US envoy on Iran
\nTLTP
\nWASHINGTON
\nIt would be \u201cunconscionable\u201d for any US President to make a new deal with Iran that didn\u2019t see Western hostages freed to return home, US Special Representative for Iran Elliott Abrams said.
\nIn a wide-ranging interview on the US policy towards Tehran and its regional context, he said that the last four years had given America leverage to stop Iran\u2019s destabilising activities in the Middle East.
\n\u201cThis is a regime in Tehran that is using people, their families, in the cruellest ways. There are three American hostages in Iran \u2013 Baquer Namazi, Siamak Namazi and Morad Tahbaz. Baquer is 84 years old. Why are they holding him? Why can\u2019t he go back to his family?\u201d he said. \u201cI think that it would be unconscionable to have any kind of agreement next year, no matter who is president, that does not include the return home of the three American hostages.
\n\u201cSeveral other countries are dealing, certainly the UK, with hostages that remain in Iran. We can only hope that there is a unified international demand that these people be returned to their families.\u201d Mr Abrams stressed that America\u2019s increasing actions against Iran in recent months had not been unilateral, nor were they devised in the twilight of President Donald Trump\u2019s administration, contrary to what critics claim.
\nIranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif accused the US of \u201creckless unilateralism\u201d after Mr Trump\u2019s administration withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly known as the \u201cnuclear deal\u201d, in 2018 and starting a \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d sanctions campaign. \u201cMaximum pressure is a campaign to build leverage. Years later, we have a lot of leverage. We have done tremendous damage to regime revenues,\u201d said Mr Abrams.
\n\u201cThey can\u2019t take four more years of it. Now is the moment to use that that leverage. Get Iran to stop the missile programme and the sabotage and the nuclear violations. Otherwise, they don\u2019t want to do these things. We\u2019ve built the pressure. Now we have the leverage.\u201d Mr Abrams explained that one reason for the far-reaching sanctions is the overlap between the Iranian military and the economy.
\n\u201cI do hear people saying from time to time, \u2018surely there is nothing left to sanction\u2019. And that is an outright fact. But sadly, it is because of the pervasiveness of the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] in the Iranian economy,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cSo many companies and activities produce funding for the IRGC. In fact, under counterterrorism sanctions, there are many more targets that deserve to be sanctioned, and this is in addition to the nuclear sanctions.\u201d Since the start of the maximum pressure campaign, sanctions on Iran have cost the country $70 billion, curtailing Tehran\u2019s ability to fund regional militias. But Tehran has also scaled up its prohibited nuclear activities and lashed out at countries in the region either directly or through its proxies, attacking oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, sabotaging oil tankers and stepping up arms transfers to militias in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon.
\nMr Abrams described how new sanctions focusing on human rights abuses and conventional missiles refocus the narrative on issues where US allies could find common ground. \u201cThere is a focus on human rights right now because it is November and in November last year there was a great uprising of the Iranian people that was brutally suppressed by the Iranian regime.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US envoy on Iran TLTP WASHINGTON It would be \u201cunconscionable\u201d for any US President to make a new deal with Iran that didn\u2019t see Western hostages freed to return home, US Special Representative for Iran Elliott Abrams said. In a wide-ranging interview on the US policy towards Tehran and its regional context, he said that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156184,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n