The Woman at the Center of Trump’s Iran Policy
John Bolton and Mike Pompeo are the public faces of the “maximum pressure” campaign. But the Treasury official Sigal Mandelker is the one actually running its most important component.
This summer, tankers are exploding, disappearing, or getting seized near the Gulf; drones are getting destroyed in tit-for-tat attacks; and a war of words and tweets is erupting between Donald Trump and Iran’s supreme leader. That’s where all the drama is, but in fact most of America’s punitive actions against Iran are taking place in a world not physical but financial. Sanctions are the key tool the United States uses against what it sees as the Islamic Republic’s provocative behavior—especially for the past three presidential administrations running, and never more so than in this one. And the Treasury official Sigal Mandelker is the one with her hand on the lever.
In the exchange of provocations and bellicose rhetoric between the
