Iran Press/ Commentary: "Consistent with prior determinations, there is a sufficient supply of petroleum and petroleum products from countries other than Iran to permit a significant reduction in the volume of petroleum and petroleum products purchased from Iran by or through foreign financial institutions," Biden said in the memo.
The White House is required to confirm every six months that there is sufficient oil supply on the world market to maintain sanctions imposed on Iran by the Obama administration in 2012.
Biden's memo to the State Department at a time when the seventh round of Vienna talks between Iran and the P4+1 to lift unilateral US sanctions on Iran is on the horizon is another sign of Washington's malice and genuine willingness to continue sanctions against Iran.
On the other hand, Biden's claim about sufficient supply of oil in international markets and the lack of need for Iranian oil is contrary to current facts, including his recent request to OPEC+ to increase oil production rapidly and significantly in order to reduce its price which faced with OPEC+ negative response.
The US goal of the repeated imposition of oil sanctions, the first of which was under the Obama administration in 2012 and the second with the Trump administration's withdrawal of the JCPOA nuclear deal and imposition of the toughest sanctions in the form of a maximum pressure campaign in November 2018 against Iran has been to prevent Iran's oil exports and depriving it of oil revenues.
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Although many countries have stopped buying Iran's oil following these sanctions, Iran's oil exports have continued in various ways, bypassing US sanctions. For this reason, neither the Trump administration nor the Biden administration has been able to achieve significant success in this regard, and Iran's oil exports and petroleum products have continued to flow in different ways.
Despite many US efforts, including threatening other countries to impose severe sanctions on them if they buy Iranian oil, some buyers, ignoring these threats, continue to buy oil from Iran. For example, China has imported an average of about 800,000 barrels of oil per day from Iran over the past three months, almost double the same period last year.
'If the United States tries to use sanctions for everything and try to tell the rest of the world what to do and what not to do, at some point in time other countries can stand against it and say: enough is enough for us,' says Corinne Goldstein, sanctions expert, referring to the gradual ineffectiveness of US sanctions.
On the other hand, Iran has been able to significantly increase its foreign exchange reserves from the sale of oil, oil derivatives and petrochemicals, despite the continuation of US oil sanctions. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a report that Iran's foreign exchange reserves have risen from $4 billion last year to $31 billion this year, indicating that Iran has made some progress in dealing with US economic sanctions.
Other reports also show that the Iranian government's foreign exchange earnings have increased by more than 700 percent since the end of 2020 and have increased about 8 times, which is another confirmation of the ineffectiveness of US economic sanctions by increasing energy carrier sales.
In fact, the United States has been overly optimistic about the impact of sanctions on Iran, especially in the oil sector, and now, three years after the sanctions, Tehran continues to export oil and petroleum products.
Written by: Reza Mirtaher
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