United States Lifts Ban on Iran Oil Purchases

The US Treasury and State departments in a recently published report have ensured that Tehran’s oil customers can continue to purchase Iranian crude during an interim period before the terms of what Iran and six world powers agreed on in Vienna last month can be fully implemented and sanctions lifted.

Both departments in the guidance that was originally brought to the spotlight by Argus Media publication have emphasized that Washington will not impose sanctions on financial institutions in those countries. And the US will not target non-US companies that help facilitate those purchases, Press TV reported.

During the nuclear negotiations, Iran’s oil exports have been limited to 1-1.1 million barrels per day (mbpd), down from 2.5 mbpd before the sanctions were imposed in 2012. Six countries — China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey — buy oil from Iran.

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh announced last month that the country plans to increase oil exports after the implementation of a nuclear conclusion between Iran and the six world powers.

“After (the implementation) of the agreement, our major work would just begin,” Zanganeh said on July 15, referring to the agreement between Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany), known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“The first step is to prepare for increasing (oil) exports,” he said at the time.

Meanwhile, European refineries have indicated their readiness to restart purchasing Iranian crude oil once anti-Iran sanctions are terminated.

According to Bloomberg, refiners based in Italy, Spain, and Greece have indicated that they are ready to resume purchasing crude oil from Iran when the country returns to oil markets.

Iran and the Group 5+1 concluded more than two weeks of talks over Tehran’s nuclear program in Vienna on July 14.

Dollar could suffer if U.S. walks away from Iran deal

If the United States walks away from the nuclear deal with Iran and demands that its allies comply with U.S. sanctions, a loss of confidence in U.S. leadership could threaten the dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency, the top U.S. diplomat said on Tuesday.

“If we turn around and nix the deal and then tell them, ‘You’re going to have to obey our rules and sanctions anyway,’ that is a recipe, very quickly … for the American dollar to cease to be the reserve currency of the world,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said at a Reuters Newsmaker event.

Defending the July 14 Vienna agreement between Iran and world powers that he helped to negotiate, Kerry deployed a new argument in a feverish battle to prevent lawmakers from killing it. Congress has until Sept. 17 to act.

Kerry warned of a potential loss of U.S. financial and political clout. He said this was not something that would happen overnight but many countries were “chafing” under the present international financial arrangements.

He said U.S. Treasury experts “are doing a full dive on how this works and what the implications are. But the notion that we can just sort of diss the deal and unilaterally walk away as Congress wants to do will have a profound negative impact on people’s sense of American leadership and reliability.”