Trump Administration Set To Unleash ‘Economic Warfare’ Against Iran To Force a Nuclear Deal: CNN

The Trump administration is reportedly set to announce “economic warfare” against Iran this week, since traditional warfare against the Islamic State has failed to secure a nuclear deal.

As the conflict reaches the six month mark, CNN’s Oren Liebermann reported from Jerusalem Sunday that “the toughest sanctions in history” against Iran are expected to be announced on Monday.

“After months of military conflict have failed to militarily defeat Iran or to secure a nuclear deal, President Donald Trump is shifting to a new strategy, which may well be an old strategy — economic warfare, with a new set of sanctions set to be unveiled on Monday by the U.S. Treasury secretary in an effort to put pressure on Iran’s economy and either force the Iranian regime into a nuclear deal, or perhaps defeat the regime or topple the regime in some other fashion,” Liebermann said.

“This is less a brand new strategy and more what appears to be a return of the maximum pressure campaign we saw in the Trump administration’s first term an effort to weaken Iran economically here,” Liebermann added.

Liebermann said the shift in strategy “seems to be an acknowledgment that the military conflict, the strikes on Iran over the course of the last few months, have failed to to bring about what Trump was looking for. That is a nuclear deal that he would consider acceptable.”

Iranian national security official Mohsen Rezai warned, “If President Trump decides to take further action, our response, or retaliation, will be seismic.”

He also warned neighboring Gulf countries not to join in the U.S. economic war against Iran, saying, “any country that takes part in imposing economic restrictions on us will be regarded as an enemy.”

“Now the question becomes, who can hold out longer if this is economic warfare,” Liebermann said. “The trump administration is betting that the pressure on Iran’s economy will pressure the regime into either a nuclear deal, or perhaps some of the wide-scale protests around economic issues that we saw earlier this year.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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