The reason was supposedly that an Iranian missile test had violated a United Nations Security Council resolution. But by the time the new sanctions were imposed, the U.N. resolution in question was no longer legally valid or relevant to the concern that had prompted it.

That contradiction is only one of a set of false and misleading claims surrounding U.S. policy on sanctions and the ballistic missile test Iran carried out in October 2015. The arguments that the test was somehow illegitimate or threatening turn out, on closer examination, to be both dishonest and hypocritical.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the two leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, have clashed over Iran policy, but not over the new sanctions announced immediately after Implementation Day. Clinton called for new sanctions against Iran over its missile test after the lifting of the old sanctions. Sanders has not made a specific statement on the issue.

The Obama administration had planned to punish Iran for its October missile test from the beginning. Echoing the arguments by opponents of the administration's nuclear agreement with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) administration officials claimed in December that the Iranian missile test violated Security Council Resolution 1929, adopted in 2010. That resolution banned any "activity" by Iran "related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons."