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While some previous U.S. sanctions targeted individuals and firms linked to Iran's nuclear industry, the new policies are closer to a true trade embargo, designed to systematically attack and undercut Iran's major financial pillars and threaten the country with economic collapse, the officials say.
"This is effectively blacklisting whole sectors of the Iranian economy," said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, a think tank. "The goal is to create a chilling effect on all nonhumanitarian commercial trade with Iran."
By broadening the focus to entire industries, the new effort is intended to make it harder for Iran to evade sanctions through front operations, a time-honored practice in the Islamic republic, said Dubowitz, author of several studies on sanctions policy. "It was a game of whack-a-mole that the United States could never win," he said.
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