The United States has imposed a new round of Iran sanctions, targeting the country\u2019s oil and petrochemical sales, as diplomacy between Washington and Tehran continues to stall.
\nThe measures announced on Thursday come weeks after US media reports said Washington and Tehran were working on a prisoner exchange deal.
\n\u201cThe United States is committed to significantly reducing Iranian energy exports and will sanction those facilitating Iran\u2019s petroleum and petrochemical trade,\u201d the State Department said.
\nThe sanctions hit a Vietnam-based company, two firms based in China, two others in Iran and one in the United Arab Emirates, accusing them of involvement \u201cin the transport or sale\u201d of Iranian oil and petrochemicals.
\nThe measures block the entities\u2019 assets in the US and restrict other companies from doing business with them.
\n\u201cThese designations underscore our continued efforts to enforce our sanctions against Iran,\u201d the State Department said. \u201cWe will not hesitate to take action against those who try to circumvent our sanctions.\u201d
\nIran has faced an enormous amount of US sanctions since 2018, when then-President Donald Trump nixed a multilateral nuclear deal that saw Iran scale back its nuclear programme in exchange for lifting international sanctions against its economy.
\nUS President Joe Biden, who was vice president when the 2015 agreement was originally signed, has promised to revive the pact. But numerous rounds of indirect talks over the past two years have failed to restore the nuclear deal.
\nWhile Washington often reiterates it will never allow Iran to build a nuclear weapon, US officials have recently said they are no longer focused on the nuclear talks, as they address other issues related to Tehran, which denies seeking nuclear arms.
\nUS-Iranian relations have been further complicated by a crackdown on anti-government protests in Iran and Washington\u2019s allegations that Tehran supplied Russia with drones that Moscow used against Ukraine.
\n\u201cWe want to see a durable, lasting resolution to the challenge posed by Iran\u2019s nuclear programme,\u201d State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Wednesday.
\n\u201cWe continue to believe that diplomacy is the most effective way to achieve that but every time we\u2019ve been asked, we have been very clear that we will, through all means necessary, ensure that Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon.\u201d
\nMeanwhile, Iran has accused the US of showing \u201cbad faith\u201d in the talks to negotiate a prisoner swap.
\nBut Washington says it will do everything possible to secure the release of three of its citizens imprisoned in Iran.
\n\u201cIran unjustly detains citizens of the US and other countries around the world as an inexcusable tactic to gain political leverage, so for them to claim that the United States has somehow shown \u2018bad faith\u2019 in pursuing the release of our citizens is beyond the pale,\u201d a State Department spokesperson told Al Jazeera last month.<\/p>\n
Aljazeera<\/p>\n
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