19 Million Dollar Scam in Tehran Sparks Protests19 June 2018

THE FEAR AND PANIC OF IRAN REGIME, FROM NEW SANCTIONS AND TERRORIST DESIGNATION OF IRGC

 Created: 04 November 2017

• Iran
• NCRI
• JCPOA
• IRGC

NCRI - A member of the Iranian regime parliament announced that the new U.S. sanctions, known as "Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act", against the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) are much more dangerous than the Security Council Resolution 2231.

Ahmed Amir Abadi said the UNSC Resolution only prohibits ballistic missiles designed to carry nuclear warhead, but in the Act, a variety of the regime’s ballistic missile activities and programs are banned and short and medium range missiles are also prohibited even if they are not designed to carry nuclear warhead.

“According to the Resolution, the ban lasts for a maximum of 8 years, but according to the Act, the phrase ‘within 8 years’ has been removed in the new law and the system (regime) is subject to infinite extreme sanctions,” he added.

This member of the Iranian regime's parliamentary board cited the consequences of  the law: “Reducing the number of interconnection banks, reapplying banking sanctions on the pretext of terrorist activities of the system (regime), absence of co-operation of large banks, pressure on banks and countries to deny the system to have access to oil sale money, placing the oil sector at the crossroads of either not working with the Revolutionary Guards or facing sanctions, increasing investment risk and reducing the IRGC's share in companies subject to sanctions from 50% to 25% in (U.S.) Treasury instructions, serious decline in foreign exchange access, possibility of a secondary sanctions of the Central Bank in the event of no cut-off of its cooperation with the IRGC, sanctioning mines, automotive, petrochemical, petroleum, electronics, telecommunications and computers sectors in Iran, and the banks providing service to them, on the pretext of confronting the missile program are the effects of the enforcement of the law, (State-run Baztab site, November 10).

The state-run Afkar News website also addressed the new sanctions imposed by the United States and its difference with previous sanctions against the regime and on November 11 wrote:

“In this update, tags have been added to some of the people who were already on the list, which makes the reasons for and legal consequences of their presence different on the sanctions list. The most important tag is SDGT. When someone receives such a tag, there are different penalties from the previous rules for cooperating with him.”

“This is the main difference of Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act with previous sanctions and an important factor in the SDGT tag. In fact, very soon a wave of people entering the new SDN begins and their offense is working with the sanctioned individuals or entities. What we seen now is a car that has just started to switch on.”

Meanwhile, Mojtaba Zolnour, head of the Iranian parliament's nuclear committee, displayed the regime’s deadlock on the nuclear agreement (JCPOA) following the implementation of the Act or comprehensive regime sanctions law, and said:

“At present, we are cooperating with the (UN Nuclear) Agency beyond the NPT and voluntarily implementing the Additional Protocol. Therefore, if we are to be unable to use it and the sanctions are added, we should review the cooperation with the Agency and restrict access that may lead to malice. We should also reconsider the voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol,” (State-run Mehr news agency, November 1, 2017).

On the other hand, Brigadier General Yadollah Javani, an advisor of Khamenei's representative in the IRGC, said: “The implementation of the law will not mean anything but firing coup de grace, and we will face heightened sanctions, and the countermeasure in this regard should be somehow ending the nuclear agreement.”

Javani continued: “The sanctions are imposed on the pretext of claiming that the IRGC is supporting terrorist groups, but in fact their goal is to confront the system,” (State-run Mashreq News, November 1, 2017).

Moreover, Hossein Kanaani Moghaddam, a former IRGC commander, noted that the nuclear agreement (JCPOA) has become a leverage for putting pressure on the regime, and said:

“The Americans are trying to create a vortex by raising the debate on human rights and intervention in the region, which could put the system in a multilateral bottleneck, and eventually this black hole would endanger our interests, so we must avoid this vortex,” (Afkar News, 31 October 2017).