Pressure on Iran is key to peace in Middle East, says top US sanctions official

John Hurley visits region to build on US President Donald Trump's Gaza peace plan

John Hurley, undersecretary of the US Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence. Victor Besa / The National

The Middle East has a real opportunity for peace if it increases pressure on the “head of the beast” in Iran, according to a US Treasury official overseeing sanctions.

John Hurley, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said Iran was at the centre of instability in the region, describing it as a “beast with many arms”.

“The head of the beast is in Tehran,” Mr Hurley said, and its arms were its regional proxies, “who've also been contributing to instability and to terror”.

Omani Foreign Minister says Israel is prime source of insecurity in region

Read More

The undersecretary was in the UAE on Tuesday as part of his first official visit to the Middle East. His itinerary also includes Israel, Turkey and Lebanon.

The aim of his trip is to build on the momentum of US President Donald Trump's Gaza peace plan and work with Middle East countries to exert more pressure on Iran and cut off funding for its proxies, he explained.

“It's an important moment to be here,” Mr Hurley told The National. “There's a real moment right now under the leadership of President Trump for peace and prosperity if we focus on the core of the problem in the region. Our view is that Iran is the centre of the problem,” he said.

Oman's Foreign Minister Badr Al Busaidi on Saturday described Israel, rather than Iran, as the principal source of regional instability, and encouraged fellow Gulf countries to engage with Tehran rather than isolate it.

The US official, however, called for compliance with UN sanctions to “continue to put pressure on the regime to denuclearise and head towards a more peaceful future”.

Snapback sanctions

Sweeping UN sanctions were reimposed on Iran in September over what western powers say is its failure to adhere to a 2015 treaty regulating the country's nuclear energy programme.

Britain, France and Germany launched the process at the UN to reinstate the sanctions, saying Tehran was in breach of its commitments. Iran has repeatedly said it has no plans to build nuclear weapons.

“There's many countries that don't necessarily recognise US unilateral sanctions, but they do recognise UN sanctions,” said Mr Hurley. “And so I think with snapback, we have an opportunity to all work together to crank up the pressure significantly,” he told The National.

While Mr Trump introduced his 'maximum pressure' policy against Iran during his first term, he has been “more serious” about the drive since returning to office, the undersecretary said.

In his first term, Mr Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 deal, which placed strict limits on Iran's uranium enrichment activities in exchange for sanctions relief.

After his return to office, Mr Trump's team held several rounds of nuclear talks with Tehran, hosted by Oman. But just three days before a sixth round of talks, Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran in June, attacking nuclear and military sites – as well as residential areas.

Israel and Iran fought a 12-day air war in June in which the US intervened with heavy bombers. EPA

The US intervened in the 12-day war on June 22 by attacking three of Iran's nuclear sites. Mr Trump has said the strikes obliterated Iran's nuclear programme, but the true extent of the damage remains unclear.

“When you're dealing with folks who behave very aggressively, whether it's folks like the leadership in Tehran or the leadership in Moscow, the President's strategy is you keep on maximum pressure until you see a behaviour change,” Mr Hurley said.

The common pressure point for both Iran and Russia is oil, he added.

The oil metric

The US sanctions policy on Iran has had an impact on the country's oil prices and exports, but more needs to be done, Mr Hurley said. “The key metric we follow is how much oil they are able to export and what price they sell it for. And we've seen those volumes come down,” he said.

Last week, discounts on Iranian oil offered to China reached their steepest in more than a year, Reuters reported. Offers for Iranian Light crude slipped to discounts wider than $8 a barrel, compared with a discount of about $6 in September and about $3 in March.

Imports of Iranian oil, which account for about 14 per cent of China's crude imports, fell to 1.2 million barrels per day in September, the lowest since May.

“You can definitely attribute the difficulty they're having to the results of sanctions, and it's very costly,” said Mr Hurley. “We can see that we're having an impact, but we need to do more,” he continued.

Iran's proxies

Another priority for the Trump administration is to cut off funding for Iran's proxies, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and other groups in Iraq, Mr Hurley said.

A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect last month after two years of war as part of Mr Trump's peace plan for Gaza. The proposal also stipulates that Hamas must disarm and play no future role in governing the enclave.

Both sides have accused each other of breaching the US-brokered truce. Israeli attacks have killed at least 238 Palestinians since the ceasefire came into effect on October 10, nearly half of them on a single day, according to official Palestinian media.

Hezbollah in Lebanon is also under pressure to disarm as part of its ceasefire agreement with Israel that came into effect in November last year.

The ceasefire in Lebanon has largely been described as “one-sided”, with Israel breaching the agreement with near-daily strikes. Israel has breached the ceasefire thousands of times, according to data from the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon. The UN has said that Israeli strikes on Lebanon have killed more than 100 civilians in 10 months.

The undersecretary's trip to Israel on Monday focused on how to maintain maximum pressure on Iran and “persuade it to take on a much more peaceful posture for the rest of the region”, said Mr Hurley.

His trip to Lebanon will focus on the steps needed to be taken by financial regulators to disrupt illicit financial flows and the regulations and reforms needed to be enforced in the country.

Mr Hurley said he would love to see both Iraq and Lebanon “get more serious about pushing out foreign influence”.

The US has stressed the urgent need to disarm Iran-backed militias in Iraq, saying they are putting the country's sovereignty, regional stability and American interests at risk.