By Staff Writer
The US will not grant new sanctions waivers to any of the eight countries currently buying Iranian oil, according to a senior US Department official on Wednesday, who hinted that crude exports from Iran might well drop to zero before the end of 2019.
Brian Hook, the US State Department’s special representative for Iran, said: “The policy of the United States is that we are not looking to grant any new oil waivers. We have taken off roughly 1½ million barrels of Iranian crude, and we have avoided a price increase in oil. And that’s not an accident. We’ve done it very well and very carefully.”
Indeed, the Iranian regime exported 2.5 million barrels of oil per day (bpd) as of last April, just one month before Donald Trump pulled the US out of the nuclear deal. By February 2019, exports had dropped to 1.25 million bpd, while the economy went into freefall with rising inflation and declining values of the rial.
Initially, the US gave six-month sanctions waivers to China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Italy, and Greece, but these are set to expire in May and will not be renewed, despite earlier report that the US would consider it if countries cut their combined imports to below one million bpd by May. (A separate wavier was also given to Iraq and is set to expire in June.)
Hook said: “2019 is going to be a much better market for global oil supply, and the forecasters say that there will be more supply than demand. That gives us much better market conditions to accelerate our path to zero imports. The current oil waivers expire on May 2. And so the secretary, in consultation with the president, will make a final decision.”
The US believes that their tough stance on the mullahs will help stop the Regime from funding terrorism across the world or attempting to take over the Middle East and come back to the negating table for a deal that addresses all of their malign behaviours.
Earlier this month, the US Treasury said that it had disrupted a “large scale front company network” that was transferring over one billion dollars to IRGC and Iran’s Ministry of Defense.
Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said on March 26: “We are targeting a vast network of front companies and individuals located in Iran, Turkey, and the UAE to disrupt a scheme the Iranian regime has used to illicitly move more than a billion dollars in funds.”
