The Treasury Department has issued what it calls a “general license,” which temporarily lifts restrictions on Iranian oil sales for sixty days. Sixty days. That is the span of a summer sublet, a gym membership trial, or the period between when you sign up for a streaming service and when you remember to cancel it. Treasury has applied this same interval to national energy sanctions, and if you see no cause for alarm in that comparison, congratulations — you may have a future in institutional communication.
A general license, for those keeping score at home, is a document that says something is illegal, then says it isn’t, for now, contingent on behavior, after which it may be illegal again, unless it isn’t. This is what the legal profession calls “a commitment,” and what the rest of us call “asking nicely.” The specific commitment in question is Iran’s pledge to keep the Strait of Hormuz open — which, to be clear, Iran has always kept open, because closing it would also close Iran’s own oil exports. The Treasury has purchased, with sixty days of sanctions relief, a promise to do the thing the other party was already doing for their own reasons. This is not diplomacy. This is buying a man a drink to get him to keep breathing.
The license was issued as talks continue in Switzerland, which is doing very good business this year as a venue for conversations that cannot happen anywhere the parties have to look at each other afterward. Switzerland, to its credit, has never sanctioned anyone and never lifted the sanctions either. It simply hosts the room. One begins to see the appeal.
To be entirely fair to Treasury, the framing is impeccable. A “general license” sounds comprehensive. It sounds official. It sounds like the kind of thing that gets laminated. It is, in practice, a sticky note on a locker that reads “please do not slam this for the next two months.” But sticky notes can be very official-looking if you write them on Treasury letterhead, and the locker, for sixty days, is technically open.
The only question remaining is what happens on day sixty-one. My guess is they issue a license for the answer.