The Trump administration has announced it will no longer exempt any countries from US sanctions if they continue to buy Iranian oil, increasing economic pressure on the Middle Eastern country.
The White House is stepping up pressure on Iran in a move that primarily affects the five remaining major importers – China and India, and the US treaty allies Japan, South Korea and Turkey.
President Donald Trump made the decision as part of the “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran, although Turkey and China have already criticised the administration.
The move aims to eliminate all of Iran’s revenue from oil exports, which the US says funds destabilising activity throughout the Middle East and beyond.
“This decision is intended to bring Iran’s oil exports to zero, denying the regime its principal source of revenue,” the White House said in a statement.
Announcing the step, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said no more sanctions waivers would be granted when the current batch expire on May 2, choking off Iranian income that had been more than £38.5 billion a year.
“The goal remains simply to deprive the outlaw regime of the funds that it has used to destabilise the Middle East for decades and incentivise Iran to behave like a normal country,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters at the State Department.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the aim is to deny of Iran of its principal source of revenue.
The administration granted eight waivers when it reimposed sanctions on Iran in November after Mr Trump pulled the US out of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal.
The waivers were issued in part to give the countries they were issued to more time to find alternate energy sources, but also to prevent a shock to global oil markets from the sudden removal of Iranian crude.
Three of those waivers, for Greece, Italy and Taiwan, are no longer needed because they have all halted their imports of Iranian oil.
But the other five countries involved continue to import Iranian oil and had lobbied for their waivers to be extended.
Nato ally, Turkey, has made perhaps the most public case for an extension, with senior officials telling their US counterparts that Iranian oil is critical to meeting their country’s energy needs.
They have also made the case that as a neighbour of Iran, Turkey cannot be expected to completely close its economy to Iranian goods.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has said the move “will not serve regional peace and stability.”
In a message posted on Twitter on Monday, Cavusoglu said: “Turkey rejects unilateral sanctions and impositions on how to conduct relations with neighbours.”
- Agency Report