(dailynewyorknews) – The European Union is the numbering of the pressure on Iran, saying Monday it will cut oil imports and freezing assets in an effort to starve the country’s nuclear program funding.
“Today’s action demonstrates the EU’s growing concern about Iran’s nuclear program, and our determination to enhance peace, legitimate pressure on Iran to resume negotiations,” Foreign Secretary Office, William Hague, said in a statement from Brussels, Belgium.
The sanctions freeze the assets of the Central Bank of Iran in European Union and the ban on the import of Iranian oil to these countries. The measures also block countries of the European Union of petrochemical equipment and technology export to Iran, or the trade in diamonds and precious metals with the State in the Middle East.
Sanctions are necessary because Iran continues to defy United Nations resolutions on its nuclear program, said Hague.
“Iran has in its power to put an end to sanctions by changing and responding to the concerns of the international community,” he said.
U.S. officials welcomed the sanctions, with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a joint statement Monday that the new measures “to refine the selection of leaders of Iran.”
But Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Aragchi, said that the measures will only harm the fragile economies of the European Union, the agency official Islamic Republic News.
“The sanctions have proved ineffective in the past and would be futile in the future too,” IRNA quoted him as saying Aragchi.
The U.S. government has taken its own punitive action on Iran Monday, the Treasury Department for the third nation bank, public bank Tejarat, for allegedly working with other Iranian banks and companies subject to sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program.
Read a summary of sanctions against Iran
This step means “all of Iran’s largest state banks have been sanctioned by the United States according to their involvement in illegal activities in Iran,” the department said in a statement the U.S. government. David S . Cohen, the deputy U.S. treasury secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, called the Bank Tejarat – with nearly 2000 branches in Iran, as well as branches in France and Takijistan – “one of Iran few remaining access points to the international financial system.
“Sanction today against the Bank Tejarat deepen financial isolation of Iran, are its access to foreign exchange even more tenuous, and even affect the ability of Iran to finance its illicit nuclear program,” said Cohen .
The International Atomic Energy Agency said shortly after the new oil sanctions announced that those responsible for the nuclear watchdog agency of the United Nations will visit Iran on January 29 to 31 “to solve all problems outstanding substantive. ”
How sanctions hit ordinary Iranians
The inspectors are in and out of the country regularly, a spokesman for the agency said Monday, but a high-level visit of its kind to be held in the end is more rare.
Senior officials in Israel, which fears that it would be a target of an Iranian nuclear weapon, welcomed the sanctions.
“It’s a step in the right direction. … High pressure on Iran is necessary and fast”, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, even as he warned that it is impossible to know what happen to these measures.
“For now, Iran continues to produce nuclear weapons without disruption,” he said.
Defence Minister Ehud Barak called the EU move as “very important” say all “a new standard for sanctions than ever before.”
Iran exports 2.2. million barrels of oil per day with approximately 18% bound for European markets, according to U.S. government information on energy. The world consumes about 89 million barrels of oil per day.
The European Union will allow contracts that are already in place to be filled until July 1, he said.
Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi told CNN last week that his country could make a difference if Iran was banned from exporting oil.
Al-Naimi said that the country has a reserve capacity “to respond to emergencies around the world to meet our customer demand, and it’s really the focus. Our goal is not falling back on production, but wants more. ”
Tehran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, the only outlet to and from the Persian Gulf, as it faces possible sanctions.
The United States has made clear it will not let that happen.
Iran: Stuck between the U.S. and a hard place
Seventeen million barrels of oil per day passed through the Seaway essential, in 2011, according to the Energy Information Administration.
The Iranian government gets about half its revenue from oil exports, the agency said.
Analysts said that while the new sanctions are the toughest ever imposed, they still contain many gaps.
Iran should still be able to sell its oil in places like China, India and other Asian countries, but perhaps at a discount of 10% to 15%. About 35% of oil exports from Iran now go to China and India.
Western leaders were walking a fine line with Iran, the work to come up with a plan that crushed the finances of the country still does not result in a loss of Iranian oil exports, which could send crude prices to gasoline is soaring.
The United States and United Kingdom have already implemented new measures against Iran, and Washington has been pressing the allies, including Japan and South Korea, to stop buying Iranian oil.
U.S. carrier defied the threat Hormuz
On Friday, European foreign policy, Catherine Ashton, challenged Iran to respond to an offer made in a letter last October.
Ashton wrote that the world powers are open to negotiations if Iran is serious about its nuclear program without preconditions. His office released the letter Friday.
The spokesman for Ashton pointedly remarked, “We await the Iranian response.”
Ashton wrote that the West wants to “engage in an exercise in trust” that would lead to a “constructive dialogue” and a “step by step approach” in which Iran would provide the international community that its nuclear program is peaceful.
Clinton told reporters in Washington that “we stand with that letter.”
“They should abandon their nuclear weapons program … and they must be prepared to come to the table with a plan to do it,” she said.
Clinton made the comments Friday after a meeting at the State Department of Foreign Affairs, German Guido Westerwelle, Minister.
The German minister was blunt in his assessment of the actions of Iran, “Tehran continues to violate its international obligations on transparency of its nuclear program, we have no choice but to pass tough new sanctions that take into account sources funding of the nuclear program. “.
Iran says its nuclear program is not military, but the United States and several of its allies suspect Iran intends to produce a bomb. The International Atomic Energy Agency has expressed similar concerns.
“One thing is clear,” Westerwelle said. “The door of dialogue remains open grave, but the option of nuclear weapons in Iran is not acceptable to us.”
Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/23/world/europe/iran-eu-oil/index.html?hpt=imi_c1
