India is on the list of eight countries that are going to be granted waiver from the sanctions that would kick-off on November 5.
Sources told India Today that India has been given the exemption after tough negotiations between the two administrations.
On Monday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed briefed reporters through a tele-conference where he confirmed that the administration will grant waivers to eight “jurisdictions” when it reimposes oil and gas sanctions.
A senior official said, that three of US’ important allies and partners India, South Korea and Japan for now are exempt, but Secretary Pompeo called it a “temporary” arrangement. The sanctions that are being imposed are part of the “maximum pressure” strategy being employed by the Trump administration.
“We expect to issue some temporary allotments to eight jurisdictions, but only because they have demonstrated significant reductions in crude oil and cooperation on many other fronts and have made important moves toward getting to zero crude oil importation”, he said.
Also in no uncertain terms the Trump administration made it very clear that while oil imports might not go to zero by November 4, revenues from oil for the Iranian regime will certainly go down to zero through the sanctions.
“Starting today, Iran will have zero oil revenue to spend on any of these things. Let me say that again, zero. One hundred percent of the revenue that Iran gets from the sale of crude oil would be kept in foreign accounts and will be used by Iran only for humanitarian trade or bilateral trade in non-sanctioned goods and services”, Pompeo said.
When asked which are the 8 jurisdictions that have received a reprieve, the Secretary said that the names would be announced on Monday. Asked if the use of the word “jurisdiction” meant that the European Union, a group of 28 countries, is getting waiver, Pompeo said the EU is not being granted a waiver.
Of the eight jurisdictions getting waivers for the energy sanctions, Pompeo said two will reduce their imports to zero within weeks, while the other six will import “at greatly reduced levels.”
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin who was also at the briefing spoke at length on the sanctions on financial institutions and the numbers involved. The last set of the sanctions would be reimposed by Monday after they were lifted during the Obama administration.
“Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism. Today we have issued 19 rounds of sanctions on Iran designating a 126 targets as part of our maximum pressure campaign… As of Monday, the final rounds of standback sanctions would be imposed on Iran energy, shipping, ship building and other financial sectors. As part of this action, the Treasury department will add more than 700 names to our list of blocked entities. This includes over hundreds of targets previously granted sanction relief under JCPOA and would have over 300 new designations, substantially more than we have previously done.”
While targeting the regime, US would not want the people to suffer is what the administration stated and hence certain financial and global banking network known as SWIFT would remain functional for “humanitarian” and “non-designated goods and services”.
“Just as was done before, humanitarian transactions to non-designated entities will be allowed to use the SWIFT messaging system as they have done before,” Mnuchin said, “but banks must be very careful that these are not disguised transactions or they could be subject to certain sanctions”, he added.
Ahead of the mid-term elections due on November 6, the briefing did touch upon the loopholes of the Obama administration and the reason why the Trump administration pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA)
“Obama administration loophole which allowed countries to continue importing from Iran even when sanctions were in place. This allowed millions of dollars to continue to flow to the regime. This regime makes uses its revenue to making unlawful balllistic missiles, for terrorism and other destabilising activities like the assassination plot that was disclosed last week.”
For now, the Trump administration is determined to go ahead with the sanctions but has allowed eight countries to import oil from Iran till they are not able to find alternate sources of energy at competitive prices.