The US has asserted that it would take the ‘strongest’ action against countries and entities which agree to comply to the Iranian sanctions. The US has also exerted that along with taking the strongest form of action, it will also include zeroing the purchase of crude oil from Iran through the imposition of the sanctions.
The US pulled out of the 2015 landmark nuclear deal with Iran in May and will reimpose sanctions on the country’s oil sector in November. The Trump administration says it wants to cut Iran’s oil exports to zero – which would deprive the Iranian government of its biggest source of hard currency.
“We are prepared to take the strongest actions possible on people who will not assist us in complying with this new range of sanctions that we are putting back into place,” Manisha Singh, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs, in a Congressional hearing.
Iran is India’s third-largest oil supplier behind Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Iran supplied 18.4 million tonnes of crude oil during April 2017 and January 2018. “In response, we are prepared to take the most serious actions possible on Iran. We need to demonstrate to the Iranian regime that we will not tolerate its development of a nuclear program for illicit purposes,” Singh said explaining the stance of USA in this moment of crisis.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have directed teams of the State Department and Treasury Department to travel together. The team as of now has visited over 30 countries so far and has had several talks about USA’s withdrawal from the Iran deal.
“We’re trying to help them understand what it means for them. We are trying to engage in all kinds of diplomatic conversations to make sure that our allies don’t feel like we are going for it alone. We are explaining to them that we need to work as a global community to address Iran’s range of malign behaviour,” Singh added later in her address to the Congress.