Iran Blasts Trump Plan Ahead of ‘Historic’ Sanctions Set To Be Detailed Monday

Iran lashed out Saturday against the threat of new American sanctions punishing any country that helps to keep its economy afloat — measures likely to especially impact Communist China just weeks ahead of a planned visit to Washington by the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping.“The United States’ declaration of new economic sanctions on Iran is far more than continued unlawful ‘economic warfare’ against a single country. It is an assertion of extraterritorial sovereignty over every independent Member State of the United Nations,” Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baqaei, wrote on X.“Such secondary sanctions find no foundation in international law,” he wrote. “The end result would be the complete erosion of sovereignty as the foundational basis of the UN-based inter-State system, and a recipe for an abysmal return to full-scale classic colonialism.”Iran’s army spokesman, Brigadier General Mohammad Akraminia, was quoted meanwhile in the anti-regime outlet Iran International as having told state media the army is shifting from a defensive to an offensive doctrine allowing for preemptive strikes and retaliation more extensive than any attack it is responding to.Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is poised to announce details on Monday of what he said on CNBC this week will be “the greatest coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world.” He added at the White House that countries buying Iranian oil have already been warned they face secondary sanctions if they persist.President Trump went further in a post on Truth Social, threatening to penalize countries that offer “any type of lifeline” to Tehran. “This will be an ECONOMIC D-DAY, and we need all of our Allies to stand with the United States of America to isolate, and defeat, the Iran threat,” he wrote.The promised sanctions, following signals that Mr. Trump has decided to focus on economic rather than military pressure to bring Tehran to heel, are expected to most directly affect China, the end customer for as much as 90 percent of Iran’s oil sales. Other countries liable to be affected include Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, all of which buy Iranian oil or natural gas.China, whose leader is scheduled to meet Mr. Trump at Washington on September 24, has said it opposes “illegal unilateral sanctions” which “will not help resolve” the issues created by the Iran conflict, but has not so far threatened any retaliatory action. However it has instructed its domestic companies and independent “teapot” oil refineries to ignore the American sanctions, according to the news portal Asia Financial.The term “teapot refineries” refers to a network of small, privately owned refineries operating within China that account for up to a quarter of the country’s refining capacity but allow Beijing to claim government-controlled entities are not buying Iranian oil. With no United States assets and operating almost entirely in Chinese currency, these companies are largely immune from targeted American sanctions.While the American blockade has been largely effective in shutting down new seaborne oil shipments from Iran, an estimated 80 million barrels of oil are estimated to already be at sea — much of it aboard a so-called “shadow fleet” of mostly older, unregulated tankers — according to the Kpler tracking service quoted by Reuters.Mr. Trump took clear aim at these and other workarounds used by China and Iran’s other customers in his declaration of the planned new sanctions, saying, “Oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries, front companies — It all needs to stop NOW. You know who you are.”

Iran Blasts Trump Plan Ahead of ‘Historic’ Sanctions Set To Be Detailed Monday

Iran Blasts Trump Plan Ahead of ‘Historic’ Sanctions Set To Be Detailed Monday

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