US Expands Iran Sanctions to Stymie Oil Money over Israel Attack
The United States Treasury Department has extended a sanctions regime targeting Iran’s economy to the country’s petroleum and petrochemical sectors in response to Iran’s missile attack on Israel earlier this month.
It has also imposed a financial and activity blockade against nearly 30 shipping companies and vessels for colluding with Iranian shippers in the transport of Iranian oil and petrochemicals.
Concurrently the State Department also slapped similar sanctions on 12 other companies and vessels. The State Department accused them of engaging in the Iranian oil trade and said the sanctions aim to curtail revenues that Tehran uses to fund terrorism abroad and perpetrate oppression at home.
The Treasury said in a statement, “This action intensifies financial pressure on Iran, limiting the regime’s ability to earn critical energy revenues to undermine stability in the region and attack U.S. partners and allies”.
The Treasury invoked an executive order issued January 2020 by then-President Donald Trump. “E.O. 13902 provides authority to identify and impose sanctions on key sectors of Iran’s economy to deny the Iranian government financial resources that may be used to fund and support its nuclear program, missile development, terrorism and terrorist proxy networks, and malign regional influence”, it said in the statement on its website.
“Pursuant to this determination, the Treasury may impose sanctions on any person determined to operate in the petroleum and petrochemical sectors of the Iranian economy”.
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said, "In response to Iran’s attack on Israel, the United States is taking decisive action to further disrupt the Iranian regime’s ability to fund and carry out its destabilizing activity”.
The Treasury also sanctioned 10 companies based in different countries including China, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as 17 vessels affiliated with these companies, for being involved with the already-blocked National Iranian Oil Co. and Triliance Petrochemical Co. Ltd. of Iran.
“Iran’s oil exports are enabled by a network of illicit shipping facilitators in multiple jurisdictions which, through obfuscation and deception, load and transport Iranian oil for sale to buyers in Asia”, including China, the Treasury said, calling the ships a “ghost fleet”.
Six other companies and six ships associated with them were blocked by the State Department for engaging in the Iranian oil trade, in an “action to stem the flow of revenue that the regime uses to support terrorism abroad, as well as to oppress its own people”, according to a separate statement.
The State Department invoked a separate executive order also issued by Trump. Under Executive Order 13846 of August 2018, Washington reinstated economic sanctions on Iran after the Trump administration withdrew from a deal in which Iran agreed to gradually achieve arms denuclearization in exchange for sanctions relief.
“Collectively, these actions target a significant portion of the shadow fleet of tankers and illicit operators that move the Iranian regime’s petroleum exports”, the Treasury said of the concurrent enforcements by the two departments.
As a result of the sanctions by the two departments, the targets’ properties and interests in property they hold in the U.S. or are in the control of U.S. persons have been frozen. Americans are also banned from engaging in business transactions with these entities.
To contact the author, email jov.onsat@rigzone.com
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