'There's Been a Major Reversal in US Political Strategy' - Prof of Int'l Trade

The US Department of Treasury has said it plans to impose sanctions for importing Iranian oil. According to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, China, Russia and European countries could be targets of the new restrictions. Sputnik has discussed this with Carl Fey, a professor of international trade with the School of Business in Aalto University.

Sputnik: The threat to impose sanctions against Russia for importing Iranian oil comes just days before Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are meeting in Helsinki this forthcoming Monday, what do you think about the timing of this statement? What is the Trump administration trying to achieve here?

Carl Fey: I think it’s probably largely coincidental. The US simply just wants to move forward with its agenda of the Iranian sanctions. That's probably the main reason, but I think we’ve seen historically that President Trump does that sometimes to sort of put something that he is going to do that is not popular with the person he’s going to meet to try to extract some concessions and then backs off a little bit when he does meet a political leader. So I think it’s not atypical if before a meeting such as a meeting coming up with Putin to have a move like this.

Sputnik: What outcomes do you expect to come from this meeting?

Carl Fey: I guess there’s really a whole range of issues they’ll obviously be talking about. I don’t necessarily think that at the top of the agenda will probably be the Iranian issue. I think the more important issue is sort of just the overall climate between the US and Russia and whether they will become friendlier or less friendly. As you know, at the beginning of Trump's presidency he seemed to be quite pro-Russia, quite friendly towards President Putin making some very nice comments about him in fact and then has time went on we've seen that there have been less pro-Russian actions towards President Putin in part I think pushed by the US Congress.

Sputnik: Apart from Russia, China and the European states might become targets of the new sanctions if the US goes ahead with the restrictions, what effect will this have on its relations with those countries do you think?

Carl Fey: Well, as you know I’m American myself. So I am very interested in following how the reaction of different countries around the world is to the US, and living in Finland, and working at Oslo University and also the University of Hong Kong in China, it’s interesting to see how people in the areas that I’m spending a lot of time these days are reacting. Needless to say, I don’t think that this is going to be helpful to the perception and the relations with the US and that really concerns me greatly as an American. I’m strongly against the moves the Trump administration has made recently in terms of the sanctions, and I think this combined with the trade disputes on the tariffs, this is going to really put the US in a much worse situation in terms of how it’s traditional allies are going to look towards it, and this really concerns me.

Sputnik: So in your view is Washington trying to finish the Iranian nuclear deal completely by mulling over additional sanctions for importing Iranian oil? On the face of it, it doesn’t look as though he’s giving any room for manoeuvre to any of these countries involved and the rest of the Iranian JCPOA, what’s your take on this?

Carl Fey: I totally agree with you. As a matter of fact, I don't think there is a whole lot of question about that. Trump, I think has been rather clear that he doesn’t like the Iranian deal not only for the US but would prefer it not to be for anyone, and so yes, he would absolutely like to have it end, and the irony in this case is, that sometimes countries have very different views on something. In reality, at the moment, the US and the EU, and for that matter many countries in the world, have a similar opinion towards Iran in terms that things are not exactly going the way they would like to see. The question is how can you affect positive change in Iran that you would like to see happen. Is it better to engage and be from sort of within, or is it better to push them aside and try to instigate change through sanctions and staying outside. That’s where the difference of opinion really comes. The Trump administration is going with the stay outside approach which I actually don’t think is the right one, but you could make the debate which approach is better.

The bigger issue for me is that I believe that the world working collectively together has a much better chance of facilitating some change in Iran or any particular country than when individual countries, such as the US, try to unilaterally move forward and take stances such as this, and I really think that it’s unfortunate that the US is departing from what most of the world has agreed on. And I should point out that this is not unlike what’s happening in the trade situation now. The US seems to be moving more towards bilateral discussions and having its own approach as opposed to multilateral discussions, that ironically have been a very central point of US policy for years. So it’s a really major reversal in US political strategy compared to what’s happened in past years.

The views expressed in this article are those of the speaker, and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.