Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

When US Senators Bob Menendez and Mark Kirk cosponsored a congressional Iran sanctions bill in December, this was read as an evident disregard for the Joint Plan of Action (JPoA) that had been sealed in November between Iran and the six states negotiating over Iran's controversial nuclear program. 

All parties to the talks, including the US, committed themselves to refrain from imposing new sanctions for the six-month interim period agreed upon in the JPoA. US President Barack Obama made it clear that he would veto any proposed sanctions legislation that reaches his desk during the period between January and July 2014.

The Kirk-Menendez bill was read as an attempt by hard-liners in Congress to derail the diplomatic process at all costs.

While the Treasury Department continued to add third country entities to existing Iran sanctions lists, the Iranians could at least rest assured that the Obama administration would refrain from sanctioning Iran directly.

While a bill that would impose further sanctions has been introduced in the US Senate, it has not yet been voted on. Diplomacy was given a chance at long last.

With the six-month interim period expired on July 20 and a new deadline for a Comprehensive Joint Plan of Action slated for November 24, it now seems that the Obama administration does not see itself bound any longer by its earlier commitment to suspend the imposition of new sanctions.

In a statement on August 29, David Cohen, the Treasury Department's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, announced that new US sanctions are being imposed that target over 25 Iranian entities and individuals who are "involved in expanding Iran's proliferation program, supporting terrorism in the region, and helping Iran evade US and international sanctions."

He went on to state that this new measure "reflects our continuing determination to take action against anyone, anywhere, who violates our sanctions."

It is noteworthy that the official justification randomly patches together proliferation, terrorism and sanctions evasion charges as a basis for the imposition of new sanctions.

In a statement on August 29, National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said the latest measures are meant to ensure that Iran's nuclear program is "exclusively peaceful."

Technically, the US government may be able to rely on the argument that the stipulations of the JPoA are not legally binding because the six-month interim period has passed.

As much as this would be questionable, assuming that the provisions of the initial text remain valid if the deadline for a negotiated deal is extended by mutual consent, the Treasury's move also carries with it a dangerous political symbolism. It risks eroding the Iranian belief in US good faith at the P5+1 negotiations.

Such policy signals are water on the mills of Iranian hard-liners. Also, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei regularly reminds the Iranian public of the basic US hostility toward the Islamic Revolution and Islam, and conveys his skepticism of the nuclear talks as well as of a possible US-Iran rapprochement.

Ali-Akbar Salehi, Head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, has announced that work has begun to redesign the controversial heavy water reactor at Arak to address concerns raised by the P5+1, and IAEA reports have confirmed that Iran is moving to meet the terms of a separate Iran-IAEA agreement.

In such circumstance, Washington's new sanctions move hardly came at an opportune moment. It also came just days before Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met EU High Representative Catherine Ashton in Brussels to discuss a framework for renewed nuclear talks. These are scheduled to take place in New York ahead of the opening of the UN General Assembly on September 16.

The latest US sanctions cast a shadow over these encounters, and are likely to complicate negotiations for a final nuclear deal that should also address the sequencing of the lifting of sanctions.

If the political calculation in Washington is that these new sanctions should ratchet up pressure on the Iranians to allow for a superior US negotiation position, this move is not only legally dubious, but also remarkably shortsighted.

The decade-old wrangle over Iran's nuclear program should remind all negotiating parties that any ill-conceived "carrot and sticks" approach might be applicable to donkeys, but not as a credible instrument in dealing with the Iranian nuclear issue.

The author is a doctoral researcher at the University of Kent at Brussels. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn