As months of talks to resuscitate a 2015 nuclear deal have faltered, Iran announced penalties on 24 more Americans on Saturday, including former Army Chief of Staff George Casey and former President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Almost all of the people identified worked for Trump’s administration, which slapped sanctions on Iranian officials, politicians, and businesses, as well as withdrawing the US from the Iran nuclear deal with international powers.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry accused the sanctioned Americans – who included several business leaders and politicians – of supporting ‘terrorist groups and terrorist acts’ against Iran, as well as Israel’s ‘repressive acts’ in the region and against Palestinians, in a statement carried by local media.
Eleven months of indirect talks in Vienna between Iran and the US on salvaging the 2015 agreement have come to a halt, with both sides claiming that political choices are needed by Tehran and Washington to resolve the remaining difficulties.
The sanctions allow Iranian authorities to take any assets owned by persons in Iran, but the lack of such assets suggests that the measure will be symbolic.
The new Iranian sanctions have targeted Gen. Austin Scott Miller, the former commander of US forces in Afghanistan, as well as former US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and many former diplomats.
Iran levied sanctions on 51 Americans, many of them from the US military, in January over the killing of General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Iraq in 2020.
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