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The instrument. EO 14382 invokes IEEPA (50 U.S.C. § 1701 et seq.), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. § 1601 et seq.), section 604 of the Trade Act of 1974, and 3 U.S.C. § 301 to declare a country- specific national emergency with respect to Iran and to create a secondary-tariff authority — i.e., authority to impose additional ad valorem duties on imports from third countries found to be purchasing, importing, or otherwise acquiring any goods or services from Iran, rather than on Iranian-origin goods directly. (Direct US-Iran goods trade is already comprehensively prohibited under the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations administered by OFAC; that regime is unchanged by this EO.)
The cited threat. The order's findings frame Iran as a continuing "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States" arising from Tehran's nuclear program, support for terrorist proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, Iraqi militias), ballistic-missile proliferation, and malign cyber and maritime activity. The EO operationalises — at the tariff-instrument level — the maximum-pressure posture established by NSPM-2 of 4 February 2025 (filed as 2025-02-04-us-nspm-2-iran- maximum-pressure). NSPM-2 is the policy directive; EO 14382 is the IEEPA-grounded statutory tariff lever that bolted onto it.
The structural novelty: secondary-tariff authority on Iran trade linkages. Unlike EO 14323 (Brazil) or EO 14329 (Russia), which imposed direct tariffs on the named country's goods, EO 14382 was modelled on EO 14245 (Venezuelan oil importing countries, 24 March 2025) and the parallel EO 14380 (Cuba, 29 January 2026). It does not target Iranian-origin imports — those are already prohibited — it targets imports from any third country determined by the Secretary of Commerce to be acquiring goods or services from Iran, whether directly or indirectly. This makes it structurally a secondary- sanctions/tariff hybrid: it weaponises the US import market as leverage on third-country trading behaviour rather than as a direct bilateral measure.
The implementation architecture.
(which third countries are "directly or indirectly" acquiring Iranian goods or services).
and USTR and recommends whether and at what rate tariffs should be applied.
extent to impose tariffs once a Commerce determination is in hand.
example, 25 percent" as an illustrative rate but does not bind any actual rate; rate-setting is delegated forward, conditional on a future Commerce determination.
Why it never operationalised. EO 14382 was signed 6 February 2026. The SCOTUS ruling in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump on 20 February 2026 — holding 6-3 that IEEPA does not authorize the imposition of tariffs — vacated the tariff component of all nine then-active IEEPA-tariff EOs, including EO 14382, before the Commerce Department had made any third-country determination or set any specific rate. The companion EO 14389 "Ending Certain Tariff Actions" of 20 February 2026 extinguished the tariff authority effective for entries on or after 24 February 2026. The Iran national- emergency declaration itself remains in effect, but the operative tariff lever is gone.
The transmission target. Even unrealised, the announced threat geometry mattered for several non-trivial trade channels:
the dominant discretionary buyers of Iranian crude under the shadow-fleet regime since 2023.
intermediate Iranian-origin oil and petrochemical flows under re-flagging and STS-transfer arrangements.
intake or petrochemical-feedstock relationships.
sourced Iranian condensate (now far smaller but a residual exposure).
The EO's broad "any goods or services" language went well beyond the oil-focused Venezuela and Cuba precedents — in principle it could have reached countries with any commercial relationship with Iran (consumer goods, agricultural exports, tourism receipts, financial services) — though the operative Commerce determination would have set the actual perimeter.
Severity 4 reflects the announced policy posture and credible threat dimension: the EO declared a national emergency and set up a secondary-tariff framework with the broadest target language yet seen in a 2026 IEEPA tariff EO ("any goods or services" — not limited to oil). The plausibly affected counterparties spanned the two largest economies of Asia (China, India), the dominant discretionary buyers of Iranian crude (China teapots, Turkey, India), the major shadow-fleet intermediation hubs (UAE, Hong Kong, Singapore), and a tail of consumer-goods exporters with any Iran exposure. The instrument was operationally inert — no rate, no third-country determination — but the announcement effect alone signalled a willingness to use secondary-tariff leverage with extremely broad sectoral reach, which is a meaningful expansion of US extraterritorial trade-policy ambition relative to the OFAC- administered Iran sanctions regime.
The post-vacatur amendment downgrades the in-force severity to 1: the underlying national emergency is preserved (allowing future non-tariff IEEPA actions — OFAC SDN designations, asset blocks, secondary financial restrictions on non-US banks dealing with designated Iranian counterparties) but the tariff lever is extinguished and no operational measure was ever taken under it.
Commerce determination or rate, so no third-country trade flow was actually disrupted. Asia-Pacific (FXI, MCHI, INDA, EWY) and Turkey (TUR) ETFs showed no measurable EO-14382 sensitivity in the 6 Feb – 24 Feb 2026 window — the SCOTUS ruling preempted operationalisation.
bilateral sanctions (ITSR, IFCA, CISADA, Section 1245 NDAA-2012, E.O. 13599 / 13902 / 14014) operate independently of EO 14382 and remain in force on their own legal authority. The maximum- pressure posture continues through OFAC SDN designations and Treasury financial-sanctions tools.
was one of the nine IEEPA tariff EOs cited in the SCOTUS majority opinion as evidence that IEEPA tariffs were operating as a general trade-policy instrument across heterogeneous emergency rationales (drug-trafficking, balance-of-payments, foreign-political-prosecution, host-of-rival-power, terrorism- sponsor) — reasoning unfavourable to the executive branch under the major-questions doctrine.
tariff vacatur, the Iran national-emergency declaration is preserved — providing a legal-architecture hook for future asset-blocking, secondary-financial-sanctions, or SDN-designation actions under IEEPA's textually authorised (non-tariff) powers.
services" target language is the broadest yet used in a 2026 secondary-tariff EO and would, if reactivated under a different statutory authority (Section 122, Section 301, or new legislation), set a precedent for extending US import-leverage extraterritoriality to non-energy trade.
secondary-tariff measure on the same Iran-trade rationale, given that IEEPA is now constrained?
internally between 6 Feb and 20 Feb 2026 (e.g., naming China teapot refiners or UAE trading desks) that could be reactivated under a different statutory authority?
pressure tools — does Treasury accelerate OFAC SDN designations to compensate for the extinguished tariff lever?
in any subsequent statutory or executive instrument, or is the oil-focused Venezuela/Cuba template the surviving precedent?
the JCPOA snapback architecture (UN-level) that ran parallel in 2025-26?