US sanctions Iranian oil smuggling network

In the midst of complicated negotiations over the reactivation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Washington has once again taken measures against Iran. This time, the target has been an Iranian oil smuggling network that collaborated in the sale of crude oil and the subsequent laundering of capital. This has allowed the Islamic Republic to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars from an oil trade that was already under US blockade. 

According to the US Treasury Department, the international organisation led by officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - Quds Force (also known as the IRGC-QF), facilitated millions of dollars in oil sales to the Quds Force itself, as well as to the Lebanese group Hezbollah. Exchanges that could have been economically key for Tehran after Washington announced, between 2018 and 2019, the blockade of the country's oil exports as a response to the Persian breach of the nuclear agreement. 

However, more than three years of US efforts to prevent Iranian crude oil trade appear not to have been enough. To date, part of Iran's oil production - one of its main sources of income - still continues to reach European markets. In this sense, and taking advantage of the appearance, the Treasury Department has also announced the imposition of new sanctions against entities located in China, Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, which allegedly also served as intermediaries for these exports. 

"As the United States continues to seek a mutual return to full implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, we will strictly enforce sanctions on Iran's illicit oil trade," US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned. 

The imposition of these new sanctions comes against a backdrop of heightened tensions due to the stalemate in the nuclear negotiations. "We do not have an agreement with Iran, and the prospects of reaching one are dim at best," said the US special representative for Iran, Robert Malley, in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 

"If Iran maintains demands that go beyond the scope of the JCPOA, we will continue to reject them and there will be no agreement," Malley added, referring to Tehran's continued demands to remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the list of terrorist organisations. An issue that has, almost from the outset, hampered the progress of indirect dialogues and international efforts to revive the 2015 agreement. Even now, it divides opinion among senior US officials and leaders. 

While one camp is inclined to argue that the Revolutionary Guard's removal from the terrorist organisation lists would be nothing more than "a threat to Americans and US national security", as Republican Senator Jim Rich has argued. Others concede that the "terrorist" designation did backfire, but prefer to wait for negotiations to materialise into concrete commitments before removing the label. 

Robert Malley, a member of the latter group, argued before the US Senate that reviving the JCPOA was the best option for reaching out to Tehran and repairing some of the damaged relations with the Islamic Republic. The agreement pursued at the Vienna talks would allow the international community to re-impose nuclear restrictions on Iran, while, for the Persian country, the restoration of its oil exports would allow it to breathe economically again. 

Americas Coordinator: José Antonio Sierra.