The European Union won’t hesitate to push back on U.S. extraterritorial sanctions but wants to work more closely with the Biden administration on sanctions programs to ease compliance burdens for EU companies, a top EU official said. “There is no better way to protect against extraterritorial sanctions than to align sanctions implementation with partners like the United States,” said Mairead McGuinness, an EU commissioner overseeing financial markets.
The U.S.’s decision to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal and rescind Iranian sanctions would be complex and time-consuming, likely taking months of bureaucratic work and negotiations, sanctions and Iran experts said. The new President Joe Biden administration has a range of Iranian-related sanctions issues to tackle before rejoining the agreement, the experts said, such as which Iranian entities and officials to de-list, whether to endorse Europe’s INSTEX and how to address humanitarian exports to Iran.
The U.S. and its allies should come to an international agreement on reviewing incoming and outgoing Chinese investment to make sure those deals are not enabling human rights abuses or funding Chinese military and technological advances, said H.R. McMaster, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser. The Joe Biden administration will have a chance to secure such an agreement if it pursues more multilateral cooperation with allies, McMaster said.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU and the U.S. should work together to set rules on carbon pricing, 5G, 6G, artificial intelligence, intellectual property rights and forced technology transfer so that others don't make the rules, and they have to live with them. At the Council on Foreign Relations webinar Nov. 20, von der Leyen said managing 5G isn't just about security of hardware or software, “it is also about our values and our democracies.” She said the Trans-Atlantic Partnership should address “the illiberal use of these technologies by China and others.”
The United Kingdom's Department for International Trade issued a guidance Nov. 19 on how its retained blocking regulation will be applied after Brexit. The guidance includes information on U.K. enforcement, reporting and license applications related to the regulation, which aims to offset how U.K. companies and people are impacted by U.S. extraterritorial sanctions on Iran and Cuba.
The U.S. plans to impose new sanctions on Iran in the “coming weeks and months,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, warning of the “dangerous” consequences if the restrictions are lifted. In a Nov. 18 statement, Pompeo touted the U.S. sanctions regime against Iran and called on other countries to not give in to Iranian demands for sanctions relief.
China said it may trade arms with Iran due now that the United Nations arms embargo has expired. It also criticized the U.S. for saying it will sanction countries that trade with Iran. “This is an important moment in the implementation process of the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action],” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Oct. 19. “China will continue handling arms trade in a prudent manner.”
The U.S. announced a range of new sanctions and restrictions against Iran, including an executive order, additions to the Commerce Department’s Entity List (see 2009210018) and new sanctions by the Treasury and State Department. The executive order, issued Sept. 21, targets Iran-related arms transfers, while the Treasury and State Department’s sanctions target a range of people and entities associated with Iranian nuclear and arms development.
The U.S. officially initiated the snapback of United Nations sanctions on Iran (see 2008210009), Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sept. 19. The move will return “virtually all” sanctions on Iran that were previously terminated by the U.N. under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Pompeo said. He said the U.S. made the move because the U.N. did not extend the Iranian arms embargo scheduled to expire in October (see 2004130011).
A U.S. technology company is being investigated by the Office of Foreign Assets Control for possible Iran sanctions violations, the company said in an Aug. 4 Securities and Exchange Commission filing. California-based Harmonic Inc. said OFAC is looking into transactions made with Iran by France-based Thomson Video Networks, which Harmonic acquired in 2016. The company said it may be subject to civil, criminal and monetary penalties, the loss of export privileges or “in extreme cases, imprisonment of responsible employees.”