Mevlut Chavushoglu said that Turkey has no replacement for its oil and gas imports from Iran.
The top Turkish diplomat added Ankara openly communicated its stance to the US delegation that visited Turkey last week.
Trump announced on May 8 that Washington was walking away from the nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries in 2015, and that he planned to reinstate US nuclear sanctions on Iran and impose "the highest level" of economic bans on Tehran. The US later asked other countries to cut to zero all oil imports from Iran.
The US administration is pressing Saudi Arabia and some other OPEC members to fill in any supply gap that will arise when US sanctions curtail Iranian crude exports. However, speculations have already been emerging that cutting off Iran’s oil supplies without creating new tensions in markets is easier said than done.
Iran has warned that Trump’s struggles to sanction Iran’s oil purchases would push up crude oil prices to as high as $100 per barrel and beyond.
Iran has also warned that the US president was wrong to believe that Saudi Arabia and Russia would help reduce oil prices, adding that both key global producers had little vested interest in bringing down the prices.
