Jason Nazmiyal in his store in New York

By Kim Hjelmgaard Deirdre Shesgreen

USA Today

Jason Nazmiyal, a prominent Persian carpet dealer based in New York, is used to America's red tape when it comes to Iran.

For years, the Iranian American businessman has expertly navigated Washington’s sanctions and export rules to sell his pricey antique rugs – woven works of art – all over the world. But now, he says the Trump administration has so tainted any dealings with Iran that once simple business tasks have taken on a senseless and disorienting quality.

Nazmiyal, 60, was recently blocked from purchasing a carpet that was already in the U.S. and had not been anywhere near Iranian soil for decades.

"This is the nonsense we have to deal with," he said. "It's becoming so difficult for us in the U.S. and also it's hard to see how the sanctions harm Iran's government, as opposed to its people," said Nazmiyal, who left Iran for the U.S. in 1978, a year before the Islamic revolution.

While some Iranian Americans fully support President Donald Trump, Nazmiyal is among scores of Iranian Americans who have no loyalty to the repressive regime in Tehran, but who are fed up with a White House that has vilified their homeland, banned their family members from visiting the U.S., and stoked fears of a military conflict. From the Muslim ban to an endless stream of sanctions and saber-rattling, they hear about their relatives suffering in Iran and feel increased hostility in their adopted homeland.

The human cost of the Trump administration's "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran is most visible in Iran itself. After Trump withdrew the U.S. from a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers a little over two years ago, he has gradually reimposed crushing sanctions on vast swathes of Iran's economy, its diplomats and its intelligence and security entities.

The latest sanctions were unveiled Thursday by the U.S. Treasury Department targeting Iran's financial sector. They could completely sever Iran’s economy from the outside world except in extremely limited circumstances. They target 18 more banks, effectively placing Iran's entire financial sector off-limits and forcing it to rely even more on informal or illicit trade.

"Amid Covid19 pandemic, U.S. regime wants to blow up our remaining channels to pay for food & medicine," Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted, in reaction. "Iranians WILL survive this latest of cruelties."

Sanctions have hit Iran's economy hard. GDP has contracted sharply. Oil exports have plummeted. The value of Iran's rial currency has been cut in half and there has been runaway inflation alongside mass unemployment and skyrocketing living costs.

The official U.S. policy is that it doesn't sanction humanitarian aid, but access to a range of critical health care drugs and products has become more difficult as imports have stalled. The sanctions have deterred many international banks from working with Iran over fears that they too could be caught up in so-called secondary U.S. sanctions.

"The Trump administration's blanket maximum pressure policy has made it so no bank in the world is going to even want to touch Iran, regardless of the reason," said Ali Scotten, 40, a second generation Iranian American who was born in Arizona and works as a consultant on Middle East issues.

He worries about his relatives in Iran. "The daily cost of living has become astronomically higher," Scotten said, adding that Trump's punishing sanctions have soured Iranians' views toward the U.S.  

Trump and his advisers say their strategy is aimed at forcing Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions, curb its ballistic missile program, and end its support for militant proxy groups across the Middle East.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Trump have repeatedly said these actions will eventually force Iran to seek a new agreement.

"Our maximum economic pressure campaign will continue until Iran is willing to conclude a comprehensive negotiation that addresses the regime’s malign behavior," Pompeo said in a statement touting Thursday's sanctions. "The United States continues to stand with the Iranian people, the longest-suffering victims of the regime’s predations."

Iran’s leaders have consistently rejected the president’s entreaties and pushed the U.S. to rejoin the existing agreement. Iran says it doesn't care whether it's Trump or his potential successor, Democratic Vice President Joe Biden, who does this.

Experienced Iran-watchers such as Barbara Slavin, director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, D.C., point out that Iran is now enriching uranium at a higher level than at any point since the Obama administration brokered the nuclear agreement in 2015.

Iran may even soon have sufficient fissile missile material to produce a nuclear weapon. And it has become more, not less, aggressive in the Persian Gulf and Iraq. As U.S. and Iran tensions have spiked to dangerous levels, the U.S. policy has also deepened a divide between the U.S. and its closest allies in Europe, a point raised by Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris during her Wednesday night debate with Vice President Mike Pence.

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Trump's approach to Iran has been an "embarrassing mix of economic sanctions, botched diplomacy, and harsh rhetoric," Slavin wrote in a recent analysis.

Some critics have suggested the Trump's administration true goal in Iran is to topple the regime.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks to a group of residents of the city of Qom, Iran, on Jan. 8, 2020.
Sanctions part and parcel of U.S.-Iran relations

That would be just fine with Afshine Ash Emrani, a 52-year-old cardiologist in California and full-throated Trump supporter.

Emrani came to the U.S. with his parents when he was 17 years old – fleeing the regime's persecution of Iranian Jews. He voted for Trump in 2016 and counts himself as an even stronger supporter of the president now, even though he doesn't like Trump's sometimes "crass" rhetoric.

He views Trump's recent foreign policy victories – persuading the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize ties with Israel – as a major step toward further isolating Iran >>>