The White House said in a statement that the United States will impose new sanctions targeting Tehran in response to Iran’s attack on Israel over the weekend (per CNN). Iran directly attacked Israel on Saturday with hundreds of missiles and drones, the vast majority of which were intercepted. Iran has described its attack as retaliatory for a strike on its diplomatic complex in Damascus early this month that killed several Iranian military leaders. Israel has said that Iran would “face the consequences” for the attack, while the United States and other allies have called for restraint.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan made the announcement in a statement issued by the White House, stating the punitive measures will be imposed shortly: “following Iran’s unprecedented air attack against Israel, President Biden is coordinating with allies and partners, including the G7, and with bipartisan leaders in Congress, on a comprehensive response. In the coming days, the United States will impose new sanctions targeting Iran, including its missile and drone program as well as new sanctions against entities supporting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iran’s Defense Ministry. We anticipate that our allies and partners will soon be following with their own sanctions.”
Sullivan said that the designations will target Iran’s missile and drone programs as well as entities supporting its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Ministry of Defense, adding they expect allies and partners to soon follow with their own blacklistings: “these new sanctions and other measures will continue a steady drumbeat of pressure to contain and degrade Iran’s military capacity and effectiveness and confront the full range of its problematic behaviors.”
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said earlier in the week that the Biden administration would use sanctions “to continue disrupting the Iranian regime’s malign and destabilizing activity …from this weekend’s attack to the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, Iran’s actions threaten the region’s stability and could cause economic spillovers.”
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