The United States has decided to impose sanctions on some companies from China and the United Arab Emirates, as well as some Iranian companies that help export Iran’s petrochemical products.
This move by the US may be aimed at increasing pressure on Tehran to revive the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
The US Treasury Department announced that it has imposed sanctions on two companies headquartered in Hong Kong, three companies located in Iran and four companies located in the United Arab Emirates.
The ministry also announced that it has imposed sanctions on Chinese citizen Jinfeng Gao and Indian national Mohammed Shaheed Ruknooddin Bhore.
“The United States is pursuing a meaningful diplomatic path to ensure mutual compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),” said Brian Nelson, Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, referring to the 2015 nuclear deal.
Under the deal, Iran limited its nuclear program in exchange for relief from US, European Union and United Nations sanctions that limited the country’s oil-dependent economy. Western countries were using the sanctions to make it harder for Tehran to obtain nuclear weapons.
Former US President Donald Trump, who withdrew from the deal in 2018, reinstated the sanctions. The end of the deal caused Iran to begin violating nuclear restrictions nearly a year later.
Talks to revive the deal have so far been unsuccessful.
“In the absence of a deal, we will continue to use our sanctions powers to limit Iran’s exports of oil, petroleum products and petrochemical products,” Nelson said.
In Tehran, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister responsible for economic diplomacy, Mahdi Safari, said the new sanctions were ineffective.
Speaking to Iranian official television, Mehdi Safari said, “Our petrochemical industry and petrochemical products have been under sanctions for a long time. However, our sales continued through various channels and will continue to do so.”
Henry Rome, vice president of research at the New York-based think tank Eurasia Group, said the sanctions could aim both to increase the pressure on Iran and to blunt criticism from those inside the country who claim that US President Joe Biden failed to rein in Iran’s nuclear program.
“While Washington aims to increase the costs for Iran of a no-deal scenario, it also aims to remove internal and external criticism of the uncertainty of Iran policy,” Rome said.
According to Rome, the sanctions imposed by the Biden administration will not change the idea that there is no great strategy against Iran or China.
“In fact, Tehran may see that a US policy of reducing Iran’s energy exports to Trump-era levels is not in sight in the near term, given the state of the oil market and global inflationary pressures,” Rome said.
The nuclear deal looked close to revival in March. However, the disagreement over whether the US should remove the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which has intelligence power, which Washington accuses of a global terror campaign, from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations caused the talks to stall.
According to these sanctions imposed by the US Treasury Department, all property and profits in ownership of these companies are blocked if they come under US jurisdiction. Those who do business with sanctioned companies may also in some cases be sanctioned or penalized by the United States.