The United States could impose more sanctions on Iran as the first anniversary of Washington’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers approaches, US State Department sources said.
The sources also expected that the US would end waivers from sanctions on Iranian oil imports.
“We did have to grant eight oil waivers in order to avoid shocking the global oil markets and causing a dramatic increase in the price of oil,” Brian Hook, the US special representative for Iran, said in an interview this week.
But he told Voice of America that “the policy of the United States is that we are not looking to grant any new oil waivers.”
On the new US sanctions against networks supporting Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), Hook said three organizations — the IRGC, ANSAR bank and the Iran Ministry of Defense — have all been sanctioned.
He accused Tehran of using these front companies over the last year and a half to get $1 billion to fund IRGC operations.
US President Donald Trump withdrew in May last year from the 2015 nuclear deal. Since abandoning the agreement, the United States has imposed a string of new sanctions aimed at choking off Iran’s funding, especially from oil.
Trump has until the first week of May this year to decide whether to issue new waivers to eight governments -- China, India, Japan, Turkey, Italy, Greece, South Korea and Taiwan -- that were allowed in November 2018 to keep buying Iranian oil without facing penalties.
Trump's national security adviser John Bolton, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and other hawks in Congress argue that it’s time for the administration to make good on its demands to push Iran’s oil exports to zero.
Senator James Risch, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, believes any new waiver will need “substantial justification” to be granted.
Risch also thinks there’s more than enough oil sloshing around global markets to counter the crude removed from Iran, thanks to Saudi Arabia and the US.
