Thank you. That's a great practical question.
I think the fundamental problem here is that the administration is going to unwind the sanctions regime, and the U.S. sanctions regime—the economic sanctions, the sanctions that are most punishing to the regime—are essentially nuclear sanctions and are linked to proliferation. So what you're going to see over the next 12 to 18 months, if there is a deal, is most of the toughest sanctions, economic sanctions, being suspended and then eventually unwound, and we will not have economic leverage. I think the right construct is to go back and begin to look at sectors of the economy, elements of the economy, individuals in the economy, and begin to re-sanction and re-designate them based on human rights abuses, and do so in a way that affects their economic interests.
I'll give you one concrete example. The Revolutionary Guard own something called Khatam al-Anbiya. Ali is very familiar with Khatam al-Anbiya, having done a lot of research on them. Who are they? They are the prime contractor. If you do any major construction project, if you're building bridges or subways or energy platforms, Khatam al-Anbiya has been winning no-bid contracts worth tens of billions of dollars over the past number of years. Khatam al-Anbiya is owned and controlled by the Revolutionary Guards. At some point the United States and the Europeans are going to lift nuclear sanctions on Khatam al-Anbiya, and Khatam al-Anbiya will go back to business. That means that any constraints that have been imposed on Khatam al-Anbiya will be removed, and they'll be able to generate tens of billions of dollars in contracts by doing business with energy companies from Europe and industrial companies from Japan. It will just feed their resources, and they will again be more flush with cash. That money then will be sent to the Revolutionary Guards to continue regional breakout, nuclear breakout, and domestic repression.
So why not, if you modify SEMA, designate Khatam al-Anbiya as essentially a threat to international peace and security that's likely to result in a serious international crisis? By emboldening this key linchpin of the Revolutionary Guards' economy, you're essentially creating an international crisis on multiple grounds. If, under SEMA, you designated Khatam al-Anbiya as a revenue-generator for Iran's vast system of domestic repression, you'd then begin to actually reconstruct economic pressure. I think you can do this alone. You can do this in concert with your allies in Europe, which is critical. And I think you can do this in concert with U.S. legislators. Remember, 18 or19 months from now there will be a new administration. Now is the time to begin to actually lay that predicate, so that when a new administration comes into office, whether Democratic or Republican, they're going to be looking for ways to try to push back against Iranian behaviour.
That's a kind of technical construct that I think Canada can do very well, given its leadership on human rights, within the confines of a modified SEMA.
