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The US has announced new sanctions on more than 50 individuals, businesses and vessels that it says export billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian petroleum products and liquefied petroleum gas.
The Treasury department said it was targeting nearly two dozen “shadow fleet” vessels, a Chinese crude oil terminal and a “teapot” refinery, as well as companies based in Hong Kong, Panama and the United Arab Emirates.
The sanctions are the latest in a series of efforts by the Trump administration to force Chinese groups to stop buying energy from Iran as part of its “maximum pressure” campaign against the regime in Tehran over its nuclear enrichment programme.
Oil exports are a critical source of revenue for Iran, which is already struggling under severe US sanctions that have cut it off from global finance and strangled its economy.
Since taking office in his second term, President Donald Trump has vowed to “implement a robust and continual campaign . . . to drive Iran’s export of oil to zero”.
His administration has imposed sanctions on a number of Chinese “teapot refineries”, which are ostensibly independent entities that are the main Chinese buyers of crude oil from Iran. It has also targeted Chinese shipping companies and groups in Hong Kong that have allegedly been facilitating the energy trade.
The pressure on the Chinese groups also marks a shift from the Biden administration, which was criticised for not taking more action to stop Iranian energy exports to China.
In June the US joined Israel in bombing Iran’s main nuclear sites that western diplomats say severely damaged — but did not destroy — the country’s nuclear programme. In the wake of the attacks Tehran suspended co-operation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The UN last month reimposed sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear programme based on what US secretary of state Marco Rubio said was its “continuing ‘significant non-performance’ of its nuclear commitments”.
The new sanctions come just weeks before Trump is expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea for their first face-to-face meeting since he began his second term as US president.
“The Treasury Department is degrading Iran’s cash flow by dismantling key elements of Iran’s energy export machine,” said Treasury secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday.
“Under President Trump, this administration is disrupting the regime’s ability to fund terrorist groups that threaten the United States.”
