After success on Iran, U.S. Treasury's sanctions team faces new challenges

Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Director Adam Szubin and his staff (not pictured) meet at the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington March 26, 2014. REUTERS/Gary Cameron

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - This is what the modern American war room looks like: the clocks on the wall show the times in Kabul, Tehran and Bogota. The faces around the conference table are mostly young. There is talk of targets, and of middle-of-the-night calls to Europe.

But the meeting one recent morning convened deep within the Treasury Department, not the Pentagon. The weapons at hand were not drones or cruise missiles, but financial sanctions, aimed with similar precision at U.S. rivals' economic interests.