Iran over the weekend sanctioned a former top White House National Security Council member who helped drive President Donald Trump’s maximum pressure campaign against Tehran.
Richard Goldberg, an aide to former White House national security adviser John Bolton who spearheaded the administration’s economic sanctions on Iran, was sanctioned by Tehran for what Iranian leaders called "economic terrorism" against the country.
The new actions mark another escalation in the Islamic Republic’s tit-for-tat sanction war with America. The Trump administration has crippled the Iranian economy with sanctions and aimed to bankrupt its corrupt regime.
Goldberg is now a senior adviser at the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, which has close ties to the Trump administration and has been a vocal supporter of its tough economic sanctions campaign on Tehran.
Goldberg called the sanctions a "badge of honor."
"I've been a [NSC] official, chief of staff for a governor, senior staff for a U.S. senator, senior adviser for [FDD] & deployed to Afghanistan as a Navy Reservist," he tweeted. "Today I gain a new badge of honor: 'sanctioned' by Iran for coordinating [Trump’s] maximum pressure campaign."
Bolton congratulated Goldberg, saying in a tweet that "drawing sanctions from the corrupt Iranian regime for ‘economic terrorism’ shows the effectiveness of his work."