The United States on Tuesday announced another round of sanctions targeting Iran as it tries to negotiate a new nuclear weapons deal with the Middle Eastern country. File Photo by Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA-EFE
May 14 (UPI) — The United States has imposed additional Iran-related sanctions, as the Trump administration negotiates with Tehran on a new nuclear weapons deal.
The sanctions announced Tuesday by the U.S. Treasury target an Iranian oil smuggling network the Trump administration accuses of generating billions of dollars for the Tehran regime’s military and proxy forces.
Fifteen front companies, buyers and facilitators in Hong Kong, mainland China, the Seychelles and Singapore were hit by the punitive measures, along with 52-year-old Iranian national Mohammad Khorasani Niasari and two shipping vessels.
The secondary sanctions were levied due to their links to Sepehr Energy Jahan Nama Pars Company, which the previous Biden administration blacklisted in November 2023 for overseeing the Iranian Armed Forces General Staff’s network of front companies that it uses to sell commodities, including oil, internationally — funds that are used to further Iran’s weapons and nuclear programs and other destabilizing activities.
According to Treasury officials Sepehr Energy obfuscates the origin of these oil shipments through a series of deals involving between multiple front companies it owns. Some of the entities that were blacklisted Tuesday were established in China and Hong Kong.
Among the tactics deployed to conceal the oil’s Iranian origin is the use of ship-to-ship transfers at sea before the cargo reaches China. Once in the country, Sepehr Energy relies on complicit local agencies willing to aid their sanctioned sales.
Khorasani is a financial inspector for Sepehr Energy and its affiliates and was sanctioned Tuesday for helping to manage the Iranian Armed Forces General Staff’s transactions.
“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, we will continue to use all the tools at our disposal to hold the regime accountable,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
The sanctions are the latest the Trump administration has imposed since early February when President Donald Trump resumed his so-called maximum pressure policy from his first term — an effort that failed to coerce Iran into returning to the negotiating table for a new nuclear weapons deal.
During his first term in office, Trump imposed sanctions against Iran and unilaterally withdrew the United States from a landmark Obama-era multinational nuclear accord aimed at preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Trump applied his maximum pressure campaign of sanctions and political pressure to force Tehran to negotiate a new deal he believed would be better. Instead, the Middle Eastern country ignored its obligations under the accord and escalated its nuclear weapons program to the point where the U.S. government estimates Iran could need as little as a week to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a single nuclear bomb.
However, talks about a new nuclear deal between the two countries have resumed during the Trump’s second term, with State Department deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott telling reporters in at a Washington press conference on Tuesday that the negotiations “continue to show progress.”
There have been four rounds of informal talks with the fifth round yet to be scheduled.
Trump, speaking in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, called on Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions and accept “a much better path toward a far better and more hopeful future” or expect consequences. The United States under administration of both Democrats and Republicans have said they will not permit Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.
“I want to make a deal with Iran,” Trump said. “This is an offer that will not last forever. The time is right now to choose. We don’t have a lot of time to wait.”
The Trump administration is demanding that Iran discontinue its uranium enrichment program and dismantle its facilities. Iran has said it will not compromise on its enrichment capabilities.
On Monday, after the United States blacklisted three Iranians and a related technology firm involved in nuclear weapons research, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Majid Takht-Ravanchi suggested there was a possibility of negotiating on its enrichment allotments.
For a limited period of time, we can accept a series of restrictions on the level and volume of enrichment,” he said, state-run Press TV reported.
“We have not yet gone into details about the level and volume of enrichment.”
According to the Treasury, since Trump announced the resumption of his maximum pressure campaign, the United States has sanctioned 253 individuals, entities and vessels related to Iran and its proxies.