Will the Navy End Iran’s Ability To Export Oil?

Shortly after the Friday conclusion of a negotiation round with representatives of the Islamic Republic at Muscat, Oman, Washington imposed a new set of sanctions, targeting illicit Iranian oil exporters. Can a full blockade, denying the regime’s ability to profit from its sole cash source, be far behind? The Department of State “is sanctioning multiple entities, individuals, and vessels to stem the flow of revenue that the regime in Tehran uses to support terrorism abroad and repress its citizens,” the department said in a statement Friday, shortly after the talks at Muscat ended.Separately, the United States Central Command, whose commander, Admiral Brad Cooper, was present in the Muscat talks, released images of the Iranian oil smuggling shadow fleet. President Trump “could be considering impoundment of some of these vessels on the high seas,” a former White House adviser on Iran, Richard Goldberg, tells The New York Sun. “This is exactly what they did to Maduro” before taking out the Venezuelan leader on January 3. They “seized the tankers to stop the oil exports and cause an economic effect.”Mr. Goldberg, who serves as a senior adviser to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, cautions that unlike the Venezuelan regime, the Islamic Republic has the capacity, which it has shown in the past, to retaliate against American military seizure of Iranian tankers.On Thursday the Iranian Revolutionary Guards seized two foreign tankers, Tehran’s state-owned press outlets reported. Earlier this week an Iranian suicide drone was downed as it approached the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which leads a growing American naval force in the Gulf. In the past, the Iranians “have launched special forces raids with helicopters to take over tankers, and they of course, have used cruise missiles and drones to attack regional oil infrastructure,” in Saudi Arabia, Mr. Goldberg says. Additionally, the Iranian-backed Yemeni Houthis could block shipping in the Red Sea, “without Iran taking direct action,” he says. As Washington did before unseating the illegitimate ruler of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, though, it could seize Iranian oil vessels after the Justice Department pronounces them illegal. On Friday the State Department listed “14 shadow fleet vessels as property of entities involved in the transportation of Iranian petroleum, petroleum products, and petrochemical products.”Additional sanctions were imposed on 15 entities that trade in “Iranian-origin crude oil, petroleum products, or petrochemical products, as well as two associated individuals.” United Against Nuclear Iran has long tracked the shadow fleet of oil exporters evading American and international sanctions on Iran. “Seven of the 14 vessels that they sanctioned today, we originally identified as evading sanctions and had on our list,” UANI’s policy director, Jason Brodsky, tells the Sun.As the Oman talks seem to “go nowhere,” he added, it is certainly possible that the administration is considering such muscular moves as seizing smugglers of Iranian oil. Tehran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, who led the Oman talks, described them as a “good start,” and indicated that further rounds of negotiations are expected in coming days. The Islamic Republic, though, is only willing to negotiate over its nuclear program, which already suffered significant damage last June. And even on that issue, Tehran refuses to consider ending enrichment. Tehran insists it would not negotiate away any part of its ballistic missile program, which Israel sees as a major threat that it will be unable to ignore. Secretary of State Marco Rubio listed the need to limit Iran’s missile capacity as part of any “meaningful” negotiations. Additionally, as the State Department stressed Friday, the new sanctions are designed to end the regime’s support of proxy terrorist groups and block its ability to oppress its citizens. Those demands can hardly be reconciled in negotiations at Oman. The president’s son in law, Jared Kushner, accompanied special envoy Steve Witkoff to Oman. At the same time he is reportedly assembling Iranian-American business leaders to advise on forming a “transitional entity to help govern Iran in the event of the regime’s collapse,” according to a Friday report on The National, a United Arab Emirates-owned newspaper. The mullahs are “thinking they’re pulling a fast one on the Trump administration by negotiating to drag things out,” the top Iran researcher at FDD, Behnam Ben Taleblu, tells the Sun. The administration, meanwhile, “will negotiate, but might actually be thinking about a post-Islamic Republic Iran.”

Will the Navy End Iran’s Ability To Export Oil?

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