The Foreign Service Journal, September 2019

18 SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL A lthough Iran has been sub- jected to a steady stream of sanctions since the country’s revolution in 1979, their depth and breadth have been dramati- cally increased under the Trump administration’s campaign of “maximum pressure.” This interactive infographic created by the International Crisis Group categorizes all major unilat- eral U.S. sanctions imposed on Iran since 2017 by year, type and location. Users can select sanctions by year, type of designee, kind of sanctions and more. “President Trump ended U.S. participation in the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran in May 2018, and promised to snap back U.S. nuclear sanctions, which were suspended in January SITE OF THE MONTH: IRAN SANCTIONS bit.ly/TrumpIranSanctions 2016 after the agreement went into effect,” according to ICG. “Scores of international com- panies announced that they would end or suspend their operations in Iran even before U.S. sanctions were formally reimposed,” ICG notes. “These came in two major tranches: an initial set of non-oil sanctions on 7 August 2018, and a second more significant batch on 5 November 2018 against over 700 persons and entities, including around 300 new targets.” ambassador to Canada since October 2017. Craft is married to coal industry magnate Joseph Craft III, who donated about $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee. The vote was mostly along partisan lines. Democrats argued that Craft lacked the necessary qualifications and spent too much time away from Canada while ambassador there, according to the July 31 Washington Post . Craft spurred controversy when she told a Canadian news outlet in 2017 that there are scientists “on both sides” who are accurate about climate change, according to Vox. But she walked that position back at her Senate confirmation hearing, stating: “Human behavior has contributed to the change in climate. Let there be no doubt.” But Craft stopped short of saying the United States should rejoin the Paris cli- mate agreement, according to the Post . U.S. China Policy Is Hotly Debated N early 100 Asia specialists, including former U.S. diplomats and military officers, argue for a course correction in the administration’s policies toward China in a letter, “China Is Not an Enemy, ” pub- lished July 3 in The Washington Post. The letter’s signatories are “deeply concerned about the growing deteriora- tion in U.S. relations with China” and write that while they are “very troubled” by China’s recent behavior, “many U.S. actions are contributing directly to the downward spiral in relations.” They express several concerns about the current U.S. approach and make recommendations for a more effective bilateral relationship: The “best American response … is to work with our allies and partners to create a more open and pros- perous world in which China is offered the opportunity to participate.” J. Stapleton Roy, a former U.S. ambas- sador to China, and SusanThornton, who recently served as acting assistant sec- retary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs (and penned the July-August FSJ article, “Is American Diplomacy with China Dead?”), are among the signato ries. Chinese coverage of the letter in the July 5 Global Times , a branch of the government’s People’s Daily , said it “represented the rational side of public opinion in the U.S. by stating the obvious truth”—that the approach of seeking to “contain” China is not what the American public wants. Yet the letter was still “filled with prejudice against China and support for U.S. hegemony,” Global Times stated. In response to the “Not an Enemy” letter, an opposing letter with 130 signa- tories, “Stay the Course, ” appeared in The Journal of Political Risk on July 18. The signatories assert that the “past 40 years during which America pursued an open policy of ‘engagement’ with the PRC” contributed to the erosion of U.S. national security, thus challenging an assumption made by many experts in recent decades that China would become a “responsible stakeholder” once a sufficient level of economic prog- ress is made. “This did not happen and cannot [emphasis original] so long as the [Chi- nese Communist Party] rules China,” signatories say. Retired U.S. Navy captain James Fanell, the letter’s primary author,