'Treating us like garbage': New sanctions announced as many Iranian Americans feel fed up with Trump
Jason Nazmiyal, a prominent Persian carpet dealer based in New York, is used to America's red tape when it comes to Iran.
For years, the Iranian American businessman has expertly navigated Washington’s sanctions and export rules to sell his pricey antique rugs – woven works of art – all over the world. But now, he says the Trump administration has so tainted any dealings with Iran that once simple business tasks have taken on a senseless and disorienting quality.
Nazmiyal, 60, was recently blocked from purchasing a carpet that was already in the U.S. and had not been anywhere near Iranian soil for decades.
"This is the nonsense we have to deal with," he said. "It's becoming so difficult for us in the U.S. and also it's hard to see how the sanctions harm Iran's government, as opposed to its people," said Nazmiyal, who left Iran for the U.S. in 1978, a year before the Islamic revolution.
While some Iranian Americans fully support President Donald Trump, Nazmiyal is among scores of Iranian Americans who have no loyalty to the repressive regime in Tehran, but who are fed up with a White House that has vilified their homeland, banned their family members from visiting the U.S., and stoked fears of a military conflict. From the Muslim ban to an endless stream of sanctions and saber-rattling, they hear about their relatives suffering in Iran and feel increased hostility in their adopted homeland.
New sanctions, maximum impact?
The human cost of the Trump administration's "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran is most visible in Iran itself. After Trump withdrew the U.S. from a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers a little over two years ago, he has gradually reimposed crushing sanctions on vast swathes of Iran's economy, its diplomats and its intelligence and security entities.
The latest sanctions were unveiled Thursday by the U.S. Treasury Department targeting Iran's financial sector. They could completely sever Iran’s economy from the outside world except in extremely limited circumstances. They target 18 more banks, effectively placing Iran's entire financial sector off-limits and forcing it to rely even more on informal or illicit trade.
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"Amid Covid19 pandemic, U.S. regime wants to blow up our remaining channels to pay for food & medicine," Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted, in reaction. "Iranians WILL survive this latest of cruelties."
Sanctions have hit Iran's economy hard. GDP has contracted sharply. Oil exports have plummeted. The value of Iran's rial currency has been cut in half and there has been runaway inflation alongside mass unemployment and skyrocketing living costs.
The official U.S. policy is that it doesn't sanction humanitarian aid, but access to a range of critical health care drugs and products has become more difficult as imports have stalled. The sanctions have deterred many international banks from working with Iran over fears that they too could be caught up in so-called secondary U.S. sanctions.
