The Trump administration ratcheted up the pressure on Iran this week, issuing new sanctions in response to an Iranian missile test and putting the country “on notice.” Sanctioning Iran, even after the completion of the 2015 nuclear deal, has not been an unusual occurrence even under the Obama administration, but the tone and tact of the Trump administration over the past week have been a departure. On Saturday, Iran responded by carrying out additional missile tests as part of an annual military exercise.
From Bloomberg:
The country successfully tested a range of land-to-land missiles and radar systems during the drills in a 35,000 square-kilometer stretch of desert in the northern Iranian province of Semnan, the semi-official Tasnim agency reported Saturday, citing Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ aerospace division.
Trump administration officials have said the new sanctions will not impact Boeing’s $16 billion deal with Tehran to manufacture 80 planes over the next 10 years. For its part, Tehran said it would respond to the sanctions by issuing sanctions of its own, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement, “against a number of American individuals and companies that have played a role in generating and supporting extremist terrorist groups in the region or have helped in the killing and suppression of defenseless people in the region.”
