The United States imposed penalties on Iranian petrochemical makers and Chinese and Indian brokers on Thursday, increasing pressure amid a stalemate in negotiations to restore a nuclear deal.
Iran’s nuclear programme was curtailed in a 2015 agreement that President Joe Biden’s administration stated it was committed to restoring.
Strict sanctions on Iran’s oil exports will remain in place unless a deal is reached, according to Brian Nelson, an official at the Treasury Department.
The Treasury Department has imposed strict penalties on Iran’s state-owned oil corporation, as well as a Hong Kong-based company already under U.S. sanctions because of its dealings with Iran on an Iranian petrochemical network.
A lawsuit was also filed for claimed business management for Triliance against China-based broker Jeff Gao and Indian citizen Mohammad Shaheed Ruknooddin Bhore.
Since then, the United States has been working to block any country from purchasing Iranian oil, after Trump’s withdrawal from a negotiated agreement in 2018 in which Iran agreed to significantly reduce its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.
As a result, China has remained the world’s largest importer of Iranian oil, while India has resisted the pressure from the United States.
However, Biden’s lead negotiator recently stated that diplomacy is more than likely to fail in its efforts to revive the nuclear agreement, indicating that if Iran returns to compliance, the United States would ease sanctions.
Removing a designation of Iran’s formidable Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group is an issue that Iran has insisted on and Biden has rejected as irrelevant to the nuclear agreement.
