Proponents of lifting U.S. sanctions on countries including Iran welcomed Tuesday’s announcement by the Biden administration that the United States will take steps to make it easier for humanitarian aid to reach people who need it in sanctioned countries.
“Historically, exemptions on paper do not lead to exemptions in practice, as the private sector prioritizes its bottom line.”
The U.S. Treasury Department said its Office of Foreign Assets Control issued or amended general licenses “to ease the delivery of humanitarian aid and ensure a baseline of authorizations for the provision of humanitarian support across many sanctions programs.”
Ireland and the U.S. spearheaded a humanitarian carve-out resolution passed last month by the United Nations Security Council, “and we’re proud to be the first country to issue authorizations and guidance to implement it across our sanctions programs,” Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said Tuesday.
“The general licenses released today reflect the United States’ commitment to ensuring that humanitarian assistance and related trade continues to reach at-risk populations through legitimate and transparent channels, while maintaining the effective use of targeted sanctions, which remain an essential foreign policy tool,” he added. “The provision of humanitarian support to alleviate the suffering of vulnerable populations is central to our American values.”
While activists have noted that sanctions kill, and that those who usually suffer most from such punitive measures are everyday people and not targeted leaders, advocates welcomed the new U.S. policy.
“The Biden administration should be commended for taking action to clarify and broaden its sanctions exemptions across all sanctioned countries, including Iran,” Ryan Costello, director of policy at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), said in a statement.
“Regrettably, broad, nationwide sanctions have harmed innocent civilians by impoverishing them and depriving them of basic medicine and care, while empowering and entrenching corrupt and repressive regimes,” he continued. “This is exactly what we have seen in Iran, where millions of Iranians have fallen out of the middle class while the government’s security forces have only become more brutal as sanctions have deepened.”
Delaney Simon, senior U.S. analyst at the International Crisis Group—a nonprofit organization that works to prevent wars and helped advance the Iran nuclear deal—also welcomed Tuesday’s announcement.
“A series of exemptions to U.S. sanctions—not just for humanitarian aid but also for disaster relief, health services, education, environmental protection, peace building, and more—is a major, positive development,” she tweeted. “NGOs and experts have called for this for years.”
However, NIAC’s Costello cautioned that “historically, exemptions on paper do not lead to exemptions in practice, as the private sector prioritizes its bottom line over conducting transactions with even the slightest hint of sanctions risk.”
“As the U.S. deepens its reliance on sanctions, it is all the more important to ensure that exemptions are effective and universal,” he added. “The administration took an important step toward that end today.”
The U.S. announcement came a day after United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo urged the U.S. to “lift or waive its sanctions as outlined” in the Iran nuclear deal—officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—”and to extend the waivers regarding the trade in oil with Iran.”
Prospects for the U.S. rejoining the JCPOA—which was enacted during the Obama administration and unilaterally abrogated by then-President Donald Trump in 2018—appeared moribund Tuesday as video circulated of President Joe Biden calling the deal “dead” in light of Iran’s deadly crackdown on dissent and material support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
