On Friday, U.S. treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin and secretary of state Mike Pompeo announced that new tariffs will be imposed on Iran following Tehran’s attack on U.S. forces in Iraq. The new measures will target eight senior Iranian officials as well as individuals involved in the Iranian textile, construction, manufacturing, and mining sectors. According to a CNN report, there will also be 17 specific sanctions against Iran’s largest steel and iron manufacturers and a vessel involved in the transfer of metal products. 

Mnuchin told CNN reporters that “The President is issuing an executive order authorizing the imposition of additional sanctions against any individual owning, operating, trading with, or assisting sectors of the Iranian economy including construction, manufacturing, textiles, and mining,” and that the sanctions will “cut off billions of support to the Iranian regime.” Mnuchin also claimed that the actions are part of the administration’s “commitment to stopping the Iranian regime’s global terrorist activities,” and that the sanctions will be in effect “until Iran stops its terrorist activities and commit to never having a nuclear weapon.”

There has been no official reaction to the sanctions from Iran and Al Jazeera’s Tehran correspondent Dorsa Jabbari explained that “Iranians usually don’t respond to these kinds of sanctions. This is becoming a regular occurrence here. We’ve had a plethora of sanctions over the last six months on the country’s supreme leader, foreign minister and now some of the high-ranking officials.” Despite the lack of an official response from the Iranian government, a sanctioned commander for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Mohsen Rezaie, tweeted, “Imposing sanctions is symbolic for America and me because this measure will have no economic impact and will not compensate for [Iran’s] missile barrage [on U.S. targets] and will not bring respect for Washington.”

Among the eight Iranian officials targeted by the new sanctions are Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Mohammad Reza Ashtiani, the Iranian armed forces deputy chief of staff and Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij militia. Several of these officials were already under sanctions. According to Richard Nephew, a former sanction expert for President Barack Obama, “The fact that they had to redesign several individuals also demonstrates that there aren’t too many more targets to hit.” In other words, although these actions could have a substantial impact on the Iranian economy, they also indicate that the Trump administration’s list of targets in Iran is shrinking. 

These sanctions are not the first that have been imposed on Iran by the Trump administration. In June, sanctions were imposed on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, and Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, to block access to the international financial system. In September, the U.S. placed additional sanctions on Iran’s largest shipping company for its role in transporting materials for the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The treasury department also placed sanctions on 26 people tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force and on Iran’s national bank following an attack on Saudi oil fields.

Despite the frequent use of sanctions by the Trump administration, there is no consensus on the effectiveness of sanctions. Some experts, like Hagar Chemali, a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Economic Sanctions Initiative, argue that the new sanctions will not have as large of an effect as previous sanctions because they do not offer the same leverage as sanctions on the oil and banking sectors. Others, like Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, believe that the new sanctions will have significant effects on the Iranian economy. Whatever the ultimate effects of this new round of sanctions, it has become clear that the Trump administration is running out of potential Iranian targets for sanctions and it will soon have to turn to other methods to deal with rising tensions with Iran.