Trump is kind of jumping out of the plane without a parachute as far as international law goes,”
One thing that forced Iran to the negotiating table to begin with was China, India, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Turkey agreeing to scale back their purchases of Iranian oil. Iran was forced to store unsold oil on offshore tankers, while discreetly attempting to make sales under the radar of US officials. Backing Iran into such a corner was not just a matter of ordering countries to follow U.S. laws—as the new U.S. envoy to Berlin tried this month. It was the result of years of careful diplomacy by U.S. officials, which could be tough to replicate now. “My understanding is State is gutted and doesn’t have diplomats of that depth.
Iranians say they also have other legal advantages. The language of most of the extraterritorial sanctions approved by the U.S. made reference to UN Security Council resolutions, giving it the imprimatur of international law when it was scrutinized by foreign courts. Those Security Council resolutions were removed as part of the nuclear deal. Without the approval of China and Russia there is zero chance those sanctions could be resurrected.
lran learned how to avoid sanctions to sell its oil and acquire the products and raw materials it needed to sustain its economy. But the United States has also gotten more adept at cracking down.“Fifteen years ago some guy would set up a company in Dubai’s Jebel Ali port and load stuff from wherever and ship it to Iran and no one would notice,” Farhad Alavi, a sanctions-compliance attorney at the Akrivis Law Group in Washington, told me. “Now the detection systems and knowledge are leaps and bounds ahead.”
In addition, the United States could demand that local currency or gold transactions also be limited, potentially foiling an ongoing attempt by Iran to build a trading network with Russia and Turkey. Iran cut separate deals with Russia and Turkey,” Mehmet Koç, a scholar at the Center for Iranian Studies in Ankara, told me. “But the new condition Trump has put is that Iran can’t do business in either dollars or rials.
In the past, Iran used a shifting network of front companies in places like China, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, and Liechtenstein, to do business. Typically, these companies would operate by hiring outsiders as silent partners or registering under obscure names that didn’t immediately raise flags.
“Companies are increasingly adopting a U.S.-style attitude toward compliance,” “Even if it might be legal they don’t want to go through all the risks.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/interna...5/iran-sanctions-trump-nuclear-turkey/560819/