Washington Imposes New Sanctions On Firms Smuggling Iranian Oil
The United States imposed sanctions Thursday on companies it said that play a critical role in the production, sale and export of Iranian oil and petrochemicals.
The United States imposed sanctions Thursday on companies it said that play a critical role in the production, sale and export of Iranian oil and petrochemicals.
Based on a new policy of increasing pressure on Tehran to reduce its illicit oil trade with China, the new sanctions targeted shipments to Asia.
The US Treasury Department in a statement said it imposed sanctions on six Iran-based petrochemical manufacturers or their subsidiaries and three firms in Malaysia and Singapore over the production, sale and shipment of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Iranian petrochemicals and petroleum.
The latest US move against Iranian oil smuggling comes as efforts to revive Iran's 2015 nuclear deal have stalled and ties between the Islamic Republic and the West are increasingly strained as Iranians keep up anti-government protests.
Washington has announced a series of new sanctions since October.
"Iran is increasingly turning to buyers in East Asia to sell its petrochemical and petroleum products, in violation of U.S. sanctions," Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said in the statement.
"The United States remains focused on targeting Tehran’s sources of illicit revenue and will continue to enforce its sanctions against those who wittingly facilitate this trade," Nelson said.
China has been the main buyer of illicit Iranian oil since full sanctions were imposed by the Trump administration in May 2019.
The tougher approach by Washington is also motivated by Iran’s decision to supply military drones to Russia that are being used to target Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure.
The Biden Administration’s 18-month-long indirect talks with Iran to revive the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) failed to produce a result at a time when popular protests broke out against the Islamic Republic and the use of its kamikaze drones by Russia was revealed in late September 2022. These three factors pushed the administration to say in October that it was no longer focused on reviving the JCPOA and its priority was supporting the rights of protesters in Iran.
Thursday's move targeted firms the Treasury accused of being involved in facilitating the sale and shipment of petroleum and petrochemicals on behalf of Triliance Petrochemical Co. Ltd., which was hit with sanctions by Washington in 2020.
Among the Iranian companies targeted were petrochemical producer Amir Kabir Petrochemical Co. (AKPC), its subsidiary Simorgh Petrochemical Co. and four subsidiaries of previously sanctioned Marun Petrochemical Co.
Treasury said Triliance has purchased millions of dollars worth of low-density polyethylene produced by AKPC for shipment to buyers in China.
Treasury accused Singapore-based Asia Fuel PTE. Ltd., which was also targeted, of facilitating the shipment of petroleum products worth millions of dollars to customers in East Asia.
Sense Shipping and Trading SDN. BHD. in Malaysia and Singapore-based Unicious Energy PTE. Ltd. were also hit with sanctions.
The action freezes any US assets of those hit with sanctions and generally bars Americans from dealing with them. Those that engage in certain transactions with the companies also risk being hit with sanctions.
With reporting by Reuters
Condemning violations of human rights and state-sponsored terrorism by the Iranian Government, the bipartisan group of Representatives submitted a resolution on Tuesday, which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. The motion was introduced by California's Republican lawmaker Tom McClintock and is cosponsored by 165 other representatives.
The resolution “calls on relevant United States Government agencies to work with European allies, including those in the Balkans where Iran has expanded its presence, to hold Iran accountable for breaching diplomatic privileges, and to call on nations to prevent the malign activities of the Iranian regime’s diplomatic missions, with the goal of closing them down and expelling its agents."
It also emphasizes that Washington “stands with the people of Iran who are legitimately defending their rights for freedom against repression, and condemns the brutal killing of Iranian protesters by the Iranian regime; and recognizes the rights of the Iranian people and their struggle to establish a democratic, secular, and nonnuclear Republic of Iran.”
The resolution mentions the popular antigovernment protests in 2017, which resulted in at least 25 deaths and 4,000 arrests, and the protests in November 2019, when about 1,500 people were killed during less than two weeks of unrest, as well as the current wave of protests ignited by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman who was arrested in mid-September 2022 by the morality police that enforce the regime’s mandatory dress code laws.
Noting that women and youth have led the 2022 protests in Iran to demand social freedom and political change, the resolution describes the uprising as “rooted in the more than four decades of organized resistance against the Iranian dictatorship.” The ongoing unrest have been most recently led by women who have endured torture, sexual and gender-based violence, and death.
It also mentions executions and death sentences in recent months and calls for measures to force the government to cease such repression.
In the 116th Congress, the House of Representatives passed House Resolution 752, "Supporting the rights of the people of Iran to free expression, condemning the Iranian regime for its crackdown on legitimate protests, and for other purposes,” it adds, urging the Administration to work to convene emergency sessions of the United Nations Security Council and to work with United States partners and allies to condemn the ongoing human rights violations perpetrated by the Iranian regime and establish a mechanism by which the United Nations Security Council can monitor such violations.
The resolution also mentions efforts by the international community against the crackdown on dissent in Iran, saying that on November 24, 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Council established a fact-finding mission to conduct an independent investigation into the ongoing deadly violence related to the protests in Iran that began on September 16, 2022. It also mentioned the resolution adopted by United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on December 14, 2022, to expel Iran from the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) for the remainder of its 4-year term ending in 2026.
Enumerating other actions by the US against the human rights violations by the clerical regime, the House resolution referred to the Department of State’s 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, released on April 13, 2022, which cites that “Iran’s government and its agents reportedly committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, most commonly executions for crimes not meeting the international legal standard of ‘most serious crimes’ or for crimes committed by juvenile offenders, as well as executions after trials without due process.”
“On October 25, 2021, the United Nations Special Rapporteur (UNSR) on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Javaid Rehman, told the United Nations General Assembly that almost all executions in the country constituted an arbitrary deprivation of life, noting the extensive, vague and arbitrary grounds in Iran for imposing the death sentence, which quickly can turn this punishment into a political tool,” read the resolution.
The resolution also condemns the Iranian regime’s arbitrary and brutal suppression of “ethnic and religious minorities, including Iranian Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs, Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Zoroastrians, and even Sunni Muslims,” noting that it deprived them of their basic human rights, and has in many cases executed them.
I had asked him about American-made electronic components found in Iranian drones used by Russia. “Please share the link with my press secretary,” said the Senator. I did share the link and I was less surprised that Young, who is the champion of export control and technology theft and procurement by US adversaries like China, admitted he did not know if and how the Islamic Republic obtained those American made electronics.
It’s a cat and mouse game and the US government has been chasing Iran for years, if not decades.
Sanctions only work if you know the trade route, the methodologies for financial transactions between the parties involved and how often and how tight those sanctions are being enforced. In the case of the Islamic Republic, its military procurement program has permeated every continent in the globe. The Islamic republic is good at cheating the system and they tap into the international network of smugglers, spies and black-market profiteers.
Periodically, the US imposes sanctions on individuals and companies but the cat and mouse game goes on.
Tehran offer good money for weapons procurement at Iranian people’s expense, which could be spent on schools, shelters and food. Instead, they fill the pockets of criminals around the world.
Popular Mechanics published a podcast recently titled: The secret war to take out Iran’s fleet of F-14s quoting a US prosecutor on the specific and curious case of a Pakistani citizen called Arif Dourani who purchased F-14 parts for Iran for many years.
He set up a restaurant in Mexico near the US border, hired American companies to find parts and refurbish them. Some of those companies were established by former US government employees including a retired US Department of Defense intelligence officer. They found parts for Dourani through auctions held by US military surplus and then sent the parts to Iran through different countries.
Iran continued to purchase F14 parts indirectly from the US military even after the US government sanctioned it. Former US prosecutor, William Cole, told Popular Mechanics that Dourani has made twenty-fold profits on his sales to Iran, paid by the Iranian people.
The case of Iran’s F-14s became so embarrassing for the US military that in 2005 they retired the entire fleet and, just to make sure that Iranians can never get their hands on their parts, they decided to shred their F14s into pieces. But as of 2023, Iran is still flying them, albeit in a precarious state.
In the case of American made electronics used in Iranian drones, it is one thing to purchase parts, it is totally another thing to be able to put parts made from different companies together and make it actually work.
This brings us to the second asset that the regime in Iran is exploiting: The abilities and know-how of Iranian engineers, specifically those who studied at Sharif University, Tehran Polytechnic, Isfahan university of technology and the university of science and technology (Elm va Sanat Tehran), which according to UK based QS university rankings, are among the top 200 universities in electronics in the world.
Iranian people are smart, and they have a history of reverse engineering products and mixing and matching components from different vendors. Anyone who has ever visited Paytakht Mall in Tehran which used to be one of the centers to purchase home computers, knows that due to sanctions, Western companies did not sell to Iranian companies, so the skillful merchants learned to purchase components from Malaysia or Singapore and learned to put together systems tailored to customer needs for reasonable prices. Instead of spending a fortune on DELL or COMPAQ, they would find you a processor that matched a motherboard with another sound card and VGA from three different vendors. You had a home computer that scored as high if not higher than the original home computers! If merchants in Paytakht mall can get around US sanctions like that, so can the IRGC.
US sanctions might deprive the Islamic Republic of military grade technology, but the regime has learned the value of dual use civilian technologies. Iran does not have a military industrial complex and companies that can rival Northorp Grumman, Lockheed Martin or General Dynamics but, throw money at experiments with civilian technologies that students in top universities have access to and you might be surprised to learn the extent of human innovation at your own peril.
Iran’s Joint Chief of Staff’s interview with Isca News last year includes some revealing anecdotes about how Iran developed its first generation of drones in 1983. He said: “Student volunteers from Sharif and Isfahan universitiesbrought a toy plane bought as a present for a child and then they mounted a camera on it. "According to analysis published by Institute for science and international security, most of the electronics used in Shahed drones used by Russia in Ukraine are off the shelf components. Shahid drones are running with internal combustion engines but students at Sharif university developed hybrid electric drones several years ago.
The US government doesn't seem to know much about how these components have found their way into Iran, nor US-based producers of these components. Hence, the creation of a task force at the behest of the White House to investigate. Perhaps the task force can identify the methodology for the IRGC to obtain these parts, some of which are sold online. Even if they do, as an old Persian saying goes: The bed is wet, and the baby is gone!
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) criticized Iran on Wednesday for making an undeclared change to the interconnection between the two clusters of advanced machines enriching uranium to up to 60% purity, close to weapons grade, at its Fordow plant.
Iran said the IAEA's position on Tehran's nuclear work was not correct.
“Iranian claims that this action was carried out in error are inadequate. We judge Iran’s actions based on the impartial and objective reports of the IAEA, not Iran’s purported intent,” the Western powers said in their statement.
The IAEA Board of Governors comprised of more than 30 countries has already censured Iran several times for breaching its obligation. The Board took action twice in 2022, as a warning to Iran that the West can take the issue to the UN Security Council.
According to the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran known as JCPOA, signatories can trigger the automatic re-institution of international sanctions imposed by the Security Council in the early 2010s that were lifted when the deal was made. In this case, since the United States has withdrawn form the agreement, the three European countries can resort to the ‘trigger mechanism.’
The IAEA found the change during an unannounced inspection on Jan. 21 at the Fordow Fuel enrichment Plant (FFEP), a site dug into a mountain where inspectors are stepping up checks after Iran said it would dramatically expand enrichment.
"As stated by the Agency, this unnotified change is inconsistent with Iran's obligations under its NPT-required Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement," the four countries said in their statement, referring to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
"The IAEA inspector's interpretation was incorrect but we reported it to the agency ... We immediately provided the explanation to the IAEA on the same day," Iranian nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami said on Thursday.
Eslami in a television program Friday night tried to justify Iran’s nuclear program in general terms, claiming that the country needs nuclear power generation and nuclear medicine. Iranian officials often make misleading statement to the domestic audience, not mentioning that a high degree of uranium enrichment is not needed for civilian purposes. Nuclear reactors use less than 5-percent enriched uranium, while Iran has so far accumulated enough 60-percent uranium for one nuclear bomb.
The production of high-enriched uranium by Iran at Fordow carries significant proliferation-related risks and is without any credible civilian justification, the joint statement said.
Fordow is so sensitive that the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and major powers banned enrichment there. Since the United States pulled out of the deal in 2018 and reimposed sanctions against Iran, the Islamic Republic has breached many of the deal's restrictions on its nuclear activities.
The Western powers warned, “We call on Iran to comply with all its legally-binding international obligations under its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA and to fully cooperate with the Agency in the application of effective safeguards at Fordow.”