Sanctions on Iran’s Oil Trade to Reimpose Maximum Pressure

The U.S. Department of State is today designating 16 entities and vessels for their involvement in Iran’s petroleum and petrochemical industry.

The Department of State and the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) are concurrently sanctioning a combined total of 22 persons and identifying 13 vessels as blocked property, across multiple jurisdictions, for their involvement in Iran’s oil industry.

This network of illicit shipping facilitators obfuscates and deceives its role in loading and transporting Iranian oil for sale to buyers in Asia. It has shipped tens of millions of barrels of crude oil worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Today’s action represents an initial step to realize President Trump’s campaign of maximum pressure on the Iranian regime. It disrupts efforts by Iran to amass oil revenues to fund terrorists’ activities.

We will continue to disrupt such illicit funding streams for Iran’s malign activities.  As long as Iran devotes its energy revenues to financing attacks on our allies, supporting terrorism around the world, or pursuing other destabilizing actions, we will use all the tools at our disposal to hold the regime accountable.

Today’s actions are being taken pursuant to Executive Orders 13902 and 13846, which target Iran’s petroleum and petrochemical sectors, and mark the second round of sanctions targeting Iranian oil sales since President Trump issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 2, ordering a campaign of maximum pressure on Iran. For more information on today’s action, see Treasury’s press release.