Iran is shipping hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil per day, defying US sanctions, even as international powers try to lift the economic restrictions and resurrect a nuclear deal that the Trump administration has killed. According to data and researchers that track a collection of monthly statistics and satellite photos from around the world, oil shipments have increased over the last year. Following the November elections, Iran’s exports climbed dramatically last winter, according to the data.
This has generated concerns about the effectiveness of American sanctions implemented unilaterally, as they were throughout Trump’s presidency. And it shows that, as the Biden administration seeks to re-enter the nuclear deal that Mr. Trump abandoned in May 2018, Iran and its oil purchasers may be betting that any fines they may face are worth the risk. Iran “went to the market very boldly” starting in December, according to Fereidun Fesharaki, the founder and chairman of FGE, an energy consulting firm.
Mr. Fesharaki, who is also a nonresident scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said, “They believed that if I’m talking with the US, they’re not going to screw with me by slapping on extra sanctions.” State Department officials refute any allegation that they have been lackadaisical in executing the web of economic sanctions aimed at weakening Iran’s economy by barring oil exports and compelling Tehran to negotiate a new deal to curb its nuclear and military programs under President Donald J. Trump.
President Biden has long seen the Trump administration’s sanctions-based pressure campaign against Iran as a diplomatic miscalculation that upset key American friends in Europe and gave China and Russia even more reason to dislike the US. International negotiators have been meeting in Vienna for the past month to try to resurrect the original nuclear agreement, which Iran has consistently broken since the United States withdrew. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency found this week that Iran has been enriching uranium — the fuel for nuclear weapons — at levels far exceeding the 2015 deal’s restrictions.
This has only heightened the pressure in Vienna for an agreement in which Iran would scale back its nuclear programme in exchange for relief from US sanctions. When asked about Tehran’s support for extremist organizations elsewhere in the Middle East, Secretary of State Antony J.
Blinken said last week, “An Iran with a nuclear weapon, or the capability to get one in very short order, is an Iran that’s likely to act with even greater impunity when it comes to these other actions.” “As a result, conversations are continuing in Vienna to see if we can return to full compliance.”
The United States’ sanctions have thrown Iran’s economy into a tailspin, which has only gotten worse since the outbreak. They have not, however, prevented Iran from selling its oil. Iran’s exports are assessed monthly by market analysts based on the country’s production levels and storage capacity, international shipping data, and imports of Iran’s peculiar crude by foreign customers due to the illicit nature of its illicit oil sales. The exact number of monthly shipments is unknown, and estimates vary widely.
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