The U.S. Treasury Department announced sweeping sanctions on Tuesday against a network of corporations accused of helping Iran avoid sanctions on its oil industry by obscuring the true origin of the product.
The move followed a separate round of sanctions on Iranian citizens accused of helping Iran expand its illicit nuclear weapons program on Monday — and, notably, a fourth round of negotiations between representatives of the Iranian regime and the administration of President Donald Trump that took place on Sunday. Iranian officials have repeatedly stated the objective of the talks is to convince Washington to drop sanctions on the country so the regime, the world’s premier state sponsor of terrorism, can continue to enrich itself, while the Trump administration insists the goal is to contain Iran’s nefarious nuclear development.
In a press release on Tuesday, the Treasury explained that the sanctions are affecting “nearly two dozen firms operating in multiple jurisdictions in virtually every aspect of Iran’s illicit international oil trade.” The primary target is a firm called Sepehr Energy, which the Treasury accused of using various “front companies” to move oil and money around in a way intended to make it difficult to track Iranian oil sales and avoid the effects of American and international sanctions.
“Many of the entities involved in Sepehr Energy’s oil shipments are part of an elaborate system of oil smuggling and money laundering, directly controlled by or acting on behalf of Sepehr Energy,” the Treasury explained. Much of the oil is reportedly being sold to China, and some of the front companies, Treasury noted, are based in Hong Hong and used to “broker and receive shipments of Iranian oil delivered to independent so-called teapot refineries in China.”
Another sanctioned entity, CCIC Singapore PTE. Ltd., stands accused of helping hide the origin of Iranian oil using “ship-to-ship” transfers to put the oil on ships that made it appear as if it originated from Malaysia. Those transfers are allegedly possible as a result of these corporations controlling a “shadow fleet” of ships used for the transfers to hide links to Iran. CCIC Singapore also allegedly provided falsified documents “confirming” that the oil was not Iranian.
“Today’s action underscores our continued focus on intensifying pressure on every aspect of Iran’s oil trade, which the regime uses to fund its dangerous and destabilizing activities,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said in the press release. “The United States will continue targeting this primary source of revenue, so long as the regime continues its support for terrorism and proliferation of deadly weapons.”
In a statement on Tuesday, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce accused the sanctioned corporations of helping fund “the development of ballistic missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), nuclear proliferation, and Iran’s terrorist proxies, including the Houthis’ attacks on Red Sea Shipping, the U.S. Navy, and Israel.”
“As long as Iran devotes its illicit revenues to funding attacks on the United States and our allies, supporting terrorism around the world, and pursuing other destabilizing actions,” Bruce concluded, “we will continue to use all the tools at our disposal to hold the regime accountable.”
The Trump administration began several rounds of “indirect” talks with Iran through the mediating of the government of Oman in April. American officials have emphasized that they will not lift any sanctions on Iran without verifiable proof that Iran has stopped its uranium enrichment activities in pursuit of a nuclear weapon, while Iranian officials insist that they will not end their enrichment for domestic nuclear energy and are seeking only sanctions relief.
“They have to walk away from sponsoring terrorists, they have to walk away from helping the Houthis,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio asserted in early May, “they have to walk away from building long-range missiles that have no purpose to exist other than having nuclear weapons, and they have to walk away from enrichment.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who is leading the talks on behalf of Iran, has emphasized that Tehran will not halt enrichment for any reason.
“Enrichment is one of the major achievements and a source of national pride. It has come at a high cost — including the lives of our nuclear scientists. It is absolutely non-negotiable,” he said last week.
“From our point of view, enrichment must continue. There’s absolutely no room for compromise on that,” Araghchi stated elsewhere. “While we may agree to some temporary limits — on levels, quantities, or scale — for the sake of building trust, but the fundamental right to enrichment is non-negotiable.”
Following a fourth round of talks on Sunday, Iranian officials asserted that they were willing to accept only temporary limits on uranium enrichment, as were imposed in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the practically defunct 2015 Iranian nuclear deal.
“For a limited period of time, we can accept a series of restrictions on the level and volume of enrichment,” Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi said.
Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, who is leading the Iran talks for the Trump administration, told Breitbart News in an interview last week that the U.S. government would not accept any terms similar to the JCPOA.
“An enrichment program can never exist in the state of Iran ever again. That’s our red line,” Witkoff told Breitbart News’ Matthew Boyle. “No enrichment. That means dismantlement, it means no weaponization, and it means that Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan — those are their three enrichment facilities — have to be dismantled.”
“First of all, we’re never doing a JCPOA deal where sanctions come off and there’s no sunsetting of their obligations. That doesn’t make sense,” he explained. “That was a mismatched procedure in JCPOA. We believe that they cannot have enrichment, they cannot have centrifuges, they cannot have anything that allows them to build a weapon.”
Iranian state media condemned the Breitbart News interview, without mentioning Breitbart News, as “deeply inflammatory and undiplomatic,” but attended Sunday’s talks, anyway.
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