US issues fresh Iran-related sanctions, reveals Treasury Department

The United States issued fresh Iran-related sanctions on Monday, including on people linked to an Iranian oil export company, the website of the US Treasury Department has revealed.

During Trump’s first term in office he unilaterally pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreed in 2015 by the US alongside China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, the UK and the EU. His administration said that this was a “defective” Iran nuclear deal and duly imposed “unprecedented” sanctions on Iran.

A year later, Iran reacted by breaching the pact’s nuclear curbs, accelerating enrichment of uranium to up to 60 per cent purity, close to the roughly 90 per cent of weapons grade. Tehran insists that its nuclear programme is solely for peaceful purposes.

Today’s sanctions are part of the Trump administration’s “maximum economic pressure on Iran in order to deny all paths to a nuclear weapon and counter Iran’s malign influence,” said the Treasury website. The department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) “is sanctioning an international network for facilitating the shipment of millions of barrels of Iranian crude oil worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the People’s Republic of China.”

The action, added the Treasury, includes “entities and individuals in multiple jurisdictions, including the PRC, India and the UAE, as well as several vessels.”

Oil revenues, claims the US, are used to fund Iran’s “development of its nuclear programme, to produce its deadly ballistic missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles, and to support its regional terrorist [sic] proxy groups.”

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