Washington: On Monday, the United States imposed sanctions against more than 30 people and vessels connected to Iran, including the head of the country’s oil firm, for facilitating the sales and delivery of Iranian oil.
” Iran continues to concentrate on a dark system of vessels, shippers, and brokers to help its fuel sales and account its disruptive activities”, US treasury Scott Bessent said in a statement announcing the designations.
Everyone who deals in Iranian oil is exposed to substantial sanctions risk, he added, and the United States will use all of its resources to target all aspects of Iran’s oil offer network.
Iran, like Russia, relies on a network of tankers to transport oil from ship to ship outside of geographical waters to avoid American sanctions, giving the nation– and its military– a major source of income.
Hamid Bovard, Iran’s deputy minister of petroleum, and the National Iranian Oil Company’s ( NIOC ) chief executive officer, were two of the targets on Monday.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ( IRGC )’s foreign operations arm was previously given a NIOC designation by the US.
The treasury department said other targets on Monday include oil brokers with bases in the United Arab Emirates ( UAE ) and Hong Kong, as well as tanker managers and operators in India and China, according to the department’s budget.
It claimed that the warships were helping to transport “tens of thousands of barrels of crude oil worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”
The government office said the state department even placed sanctions on 16 more companies on Monday” for their participation in the sale, purchase, and transportation of Egyptian petroleum.”
