U.S. pressure to force Ethiopian parties to the negotiating table and agree to a cease-fire will have a hard time ending the conflict in Ethiopia and improving the worsening humanitarian crisis there. U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order, announced publicly by the White House on Sept. 17, creating a new sanctions regime to be used against anyone involved in the Tigray conflict and blocking progress toward a cease-fire and possible negotiations. Thus far, no one has been sanctioned by the Treasury Department, but Biden threatened to use them against all sides of the conflict if a cease-fire does not emerge. In a Sept. 16 conference call with the press, a senior U.S. administration official said that "the administration will take aggressive action, under this executive order, to impose sanctions against a broad range of individuals or entities," if steps were not taken to resolve the conflict.