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Iran Nuclear Deal Tag

The United States on Thursday placed sweeping sanctions on Iran's banking sector, crippling the regime's ability to finance global terrorism. The latest sanctions announced by the White House are perhaps the toughest measures against the regime-linked banks since President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Obama-Biden nuclear deal two years ago.

The Iranian regime is using its space program as a cover for further developing long-range missiles, the United States has warned. "The technologies used to launch satellites into orbit are virtually identical and interchangeable with those used in longer-range systems, including intercontinental ballistic missiles," U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week.

The United States has imposed sanctions against a China-linked business network financing Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) and Quds Force, both U.S. designated terrorist entities. The network bought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil from National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), a state-owned Iranian firm "which helps to finance Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and its terrorist proxies," The U.S. Treasury Department disclosed Thursday.

Germany, France and the United Kingdom have launched a formal dispute mechanism against Iran which could end up putting international sanctions on the regime. The measure was announced on Tuesday following recent Iranian violations of the 2015 nuclear deal. The dispute will now be brought before a Joint Commission made up of Iran, Russia, China, the three European signatories, and the European Union. If the panel fails to resolve the dispute, the matter will then come before the United Nations Security Council.

In the short run, the killing of Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps., is a complete victory for Trump. The killing came after a long series of Iranian provocations over the past several months and years. The killing of an American and the attack on the American Embassy in Baghdad, together with planned attacks in the near future, were too much and provoked the drone attack on Soleimani.

Tehran may have killed more than 1,000 protesters during the deadly clampdown against anti-regime protests, the U.S. State Department said. "As the truth is trickling out of Iran, it appears the regime could have murdered over a thousand Iranian citizens since the protests began,” the U.S. Special Representative for Iran, Brian Hook, disclosed on Thursday.

Israel is set to present Iran's violation of the nuclear agreement to the United Nations Security Council later this month, the country's Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Katz confirmed on Thursday. "Iran is developing missiles capable of carrying a nuclear payload while violating UN Security Council resolutions," he said.