The Trump administration is cracking down on 31 Iranian nuclear scientists and entities, arguing that the regime in Tehran still plans to acquire a nuclear weapon, administration officials announced Friday.
“The United States will continue applying maximum pressure to the Iranian regime, using all economic tools to prevent Iran from developing weapons of mass destruction,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.
The new designations target “the intellectual firepower” at Iran’s main defense research agency, a senior administration official explained. The U.S. is blacklisting individuals throughout the Organization for Defense Innovation and Research, known by its Persian acronym SPND, from “working-level staff” to senior management. Officials put special emphasis on Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a physics professor and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps member who founded the regime’s nuclear weapons program and now leads many of the same experts through SPND.
“This is the fellow who was aiming to be the father of the Iranian nuclear bomb, and the fact that he has been put in charge of this and employs so many of the same people who worked for him in doing exactly that effort tells you sort of what you need to know,” a second senior administration official told reporters.
“This is a way for them to keep the gang together,” the official continued. “It’s as if some evil version of Robert Oppenheimer had been kept in charge of the Manhattan Project crew together for years afterward pretending that they were — or even legitimately — working on other things, but being very carefully kept together in order to be able to be called upon to get back to their original line of work.”
The announcement is intended to bolster the case for renegotiating key provisions of the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which President Trump withdrew the United States from last May. The administration notes that a series of sunset clauses that ease restrictions on Iran’s nuclear research and ballistic missile programs allow the regime gradually to acquire a nuclear bomb, without even breaking the pact. U.S. negotiators tried to persuade European allies to agree to new sanctions in the event Iran takes advantage of those sunset clauses, but the Europeans resisted due to concerns that they would violate the JCPOA.
“Our European partners do not disagree significantly with us,” the second official said. “We do have some disagreements about what one should do about the problem, but there is no disagreement over the fundamental problem of the potential for Iran to reconstitute its weapons program.”
The sanctions, the latest in a series of efforts to put a crimp in Iran’s nuclear capabilities, should hamper the scientists’ ability to travel abroad and conduct research at foreign universities.
“This is especially relevant to young professionals in Iran’s research and development sector,” the first senior administration official said. “Any association — they should understand — with SPND or its subordinate groups makes them radioactive.”
