Iran Says China Enforcing US Sanctions On Shipping and Ports

In a meeting of the government economic coordination committee, Raisi also appointed his first vice president Mohammad Mokhber to head efforts in dealing with US sanctions, which have crippled Iran’s economy since 2018.

Facing unsurmountable difficulties in protecting the value of Iran’s currency the hardliner president also ordered the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) and other agencies to confront those who “manufacture negative sentiment” against the rial.

The main reason behind a ninefold fall in the value of the rial in four years, is lack of revenues from oil exports, sanctioned by the Trump administration since 2018.

Raisi, who assumed office in August promising a new era of more effective leadership, has so far issued decrees asking his ministers to achieve goals that the previous government was not able to accomplish. Controlling the value of the national currency or skyrocketing inflation are two issues that Raisi and others address in their statements daily, without a viable plan emerging.

Tehran has been resisting efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement that would lift sanctions and provide a lifeline to its economy.

Lawmakers speaking to media after Sunday's session said Hossein Amir-Abdollahian reiterated that Iran needs to see "serious steps" by Washington before it resumes talks suspended since June.

Alireza Salimi, a leading lawmaker quoted Amir-Abdollahian as saying that Iran's policy is "action for action". Earlier this month, the foreign minister had alluded to demands that Washington should unfreeze some of Iran's blocked funds before Tehran engages in contacts with the US.

Speaking to Tasnim news agency on Sunday, Shahriar Heydari, a member of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said the foreign minister also thanked Parliament for ratifying a nuclear bill in December aimed at toughening Iran's bargaining position and said this will give the other parties a clear message and enhance the power of Iran’s negotiators.

The parliament passed an act entitled "Strategic Action Plan to Counter Sanctions and Protect Rights of the People Act" in December that obliged the government to step up Iran’s nuclear program further beyond the limits set by the 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers and to reduce Iran’s cooperation with the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

“By the Iranian foreign minister’s own admission, the 'Strategic Action Plan' has drawn the attention of influential countries,” another lawmaker, Behruz Mohebbi, tweeted after the meeting. He added that all parties to the agreement have received "a clear and serious message" and that the government" will have a "strong tool" in its hands in the upcoming talks.

Europeans have recently raised pressure on Tehran to resume the talks. On June 20, two days after the election of Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi) to presidency, Iran suspended the talks that began in Vienna in April and has delayed its return despite repeated promises of resuming the negotiations “soon”.

Alluding to Iran's accelerating enrichment of uranium to higher fissile purity, a possible pathway to a nuclear bomb, diplomats from Britain, Germany and France, known as the E3, said in a note on Wednesday that the situation with Iran’s nuclear activities has been worsening since negotiations stalled in June.

During a visit by Enrique Mora, European Union’s lead negotiator on Iran’s nuclear issue Thursday, Iran agreed to meet with E3 representatives in Brussels in the coming weeks. According to lawmakers, in Sunday's closed session Amir-Abdollahian said talks with E3, Russia and China, the five remaining parties to the JCPOA, will begin in Brussels on Thursday [21 October]. This in effect would be circumventing the United States if no US representative travels to Brussels to be on the sidelines of the talks, as was the case in Vienna.

After the parliament's meeting with Amir-Abdollahian Sunday, lawmaker Alireza Salimi also quoted Amir-Abdollahian as saying that the Vienna talks must begin "from the point where Trump withdrew from the JCPOA". Former US President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018 and imposed tough sanctions on Iran.

According to lawmakers Amir-Abdollahian also tried to assure parliament that Iran will not be pressured by the economic hardship prevailing in the country and will seek alternatives to help people in their daily lives. This would be no easy proposition as US sanctions have deprived Tehran of tens of billions of dollars in oil export revenues.

A report by the Plan and Budget Organization prepared in August, before Hassan Rouhani handed the administration to Ebrahim Raisi, was published Saturday that paints a very grim picture of the Iranian economy if talks fail and US sanctions are not lifted.

According to the report, if sanctions continue, in 2024 the government will face bankruptcy and the national currency will lose value tenfold. The dollar may rise to as high as 2,840,000 rials in 2027. Currently the dollar is trading at 270,000 rials.

He said signs show that these countries might be "able to break free from the strangling grip of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards."

Bennett was addressing lawmakers during a weekly cabinet meeting following last week's gun battles on the streets of Beirut which killed seven people and as Iraq's Shiite militias, that often serve as a proxy for neighboring Iran, took a beating in the national election.

Israel sees "developments and trends emerging from below, of forces who simply had enough with Iranian control and influence," said Bennett.

He added that every place that Iranians enter goes into "a whirlwind of violence, poverty, instability and failure."

The confrontation in Beirut erupted when Iran-backed Hezbollah and its allu the Amla movement called for protests against a judge investigating last year’s massive port explosion. The incident raised fears of the country being drawn into further violence.

Underlying the violence are Lebanon's entrenched sectarian divides and Hezbollah’s growing influence in the past decade in the corrupt political system.

Hezbollah however has decided not to escalate the tension and said it would not be pulled into more violence.

Reporting by AP

The announcement came hours after businessman Alex Saab was put on a US-bound plane in Cape Verde after failing in a 16-month fight to prevent his extradition to face money laundering charges in Miami. Saab was arrested in the African archipelago while making a stop on the way to Iran for what Maduro’s government later described as a diplomatic humanitarian mission.

US prosecutors say Saab amassed a fortune wheeling and dealing on behalf of the socialist government, which faces heavy US sanctions.

American authorities have been targeting Saab for years, believing he holds numerous secrets about how Maduro, the president's family and his top aides siphoned off millions of dollars in government contracts for food and housing amid widespread hunger in oil-rich Venezuela.

However, his defenders, including Maduro's government as well as allies Russia and Cuba, consider his arrest illegal and maintain that Saab was a diplomatic envoy of the Venezuelan.

“The government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela repudiates this grave violation of human rights against a Venezuelan citizen, invested as a diplomat and representative of our country before the world,” the statement said.

Report by AP

An Iran-flagged supertanker has sailed from Venezuelan waters carrying 2 million barrels of heavy crude provided by state-run oil firm PDVSA, according to documents seen by Reuters and vessel tracking services.

The shipment is part of a deal agreed by PDVSA and its counterpart National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) that exchanges Iranian condensate for Venezuela's Merey crude. The swaps aim to ease an acute shortage of diluents that has cut Venezuela's oil output and exports, Reuters reported last month.

In August 2020. the United States confiscated four Iranian fuel shipments that had been bound for Venezuela, disrupting at the time a key supply line for both Tehran and Caracas as they defied US sanctions. In October 2020, US announced that it had sold the gasoline and refined oil.

Dino I, a very large crude carrier (VLCC) owned and operated by NIOC's National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC), finished loading the Venezuelan oil at PDVSA's Jose port late Friday, according to the documents, a source and monitoring service TankerTrackers.com.

The bilateral oil trade could be a breach of U.S. sanctions on both countries, the US Treasury Department told Reuters last month, citing government orders that establish the punitive measures.

Reuters said a Treasury spokesperson on Saturday declined to comment further on the latest development. If the US allows the shipment to proceed, it would be a change from the Trump era policy of vigorously enforcing US sanctions against Iran.

Already the vessel was allowed to reach Venezuela in September with its transponder turned off while carrying 2.1 million barrels of Iranian condensate.

A second condensate cargo of similar size is expected to be delivered to Venezuela in the coming weeks as part of the swap routine, which will be in effect for six months in its first phase.

The Biden administration has declared its opposition to Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and has entered indirect talks with Tehran to revive the agreement. So far, Washington has kept the Trump-era sanctions, as Iran has failed to reach an agreement to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Actions, JCPOA.

PDVSA first launched the exchange last month by sending 1.9 million barrels of Merey heavy crude on the Iran-flagged supertanker Felicity.

The exchange provides the OPEC nation with a stable supply of blending material needed to convert its extra heavy oil into exportable grades. The pact also delivers heavy oil to Iran for blending, refining or marketing to Asian customers.

Iran and Venezuela have strengthened their cooperation in the last year even under the watchful gaze of the United States, which has in recent years reimposed sanctions on Iranian state entities, including NIOC, and in 2019 blacklisted PDVSA.

With reporting by Reuters