TEHRAN ( WNAM MONITORING): The United States imposed sanctions on Thursday on Iran’s oil minister Mohsen Paknejad and some Hong Kong-flagged vessels that are part of a shadow fleet that helps disguise Iranian oil shipments.
Paknejad “oversees the export of tens of billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian oil and has allocated billions of dollars’ worth of oil to Iran’s armed forces for export,” the US Treasury Department said in a statement on Thursday, according to Reuters.
Treasury also designated owners or operators of vessels that have delivered Iranian oil to China or lifted it from storage there, it said. Those were in multiple jurisdictions, including India and China, it said.
Iran’s military relies on a vast shadow fleet of ships to disguise shipments worth billions to China, the Treasury claimed.
Thursday’s designated vessels include the Hong Kong-flagged Peace Hill and its owner Hong Kong Heshun Transportation Trading Limited, the Iran-flagged Polaris 1, the Seychelles-registered Fallon Shipping Company Ltd, and the Liberia-registered Itaugua Services Inc, the statement said.
The U.S. Department of State is designating three entities and three vessels as blocked property, it continued.
Donald Trump pulled his country out of the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal unilaterally in May 2018 and reasserted his futile Maximum Pressure Campaign against Tehran when he returned to the White House earlier this year. Iran has said it will not negotiate under pressure.
In a speech on Wednesday, as the UAE delegation was visiting Tehran to hand over Trump’s message, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said a call the US president for negotiations with Iran is nothing but an attempt to “deceive the world public opinion.”
The Leader also issued a stark warning to the US saying that if the Americans and their allies launch military attacks on Iran, retaliation is definitive and they will be the loser.
