India to try averting American ban on oil imports from Iran

Sandeep Dikshit

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 22

India will attempt a last-minute aversion of the American guillotine on oil imports from Iran at a forthcoming meeting with senior US State Department officials this week.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo today dropped a bombshell that sent crude prices soaring by announcing that Washington has decided not to exempt any country from its diktat of not importing Iranian oil from May 2.

India had been hoping the US would continue to exempt it and sought to partially accommodate US wishes by gradually cutting down on purchase of Iranian oil.

New Delhi is expected to point out during meetings with senior US State Department official Alice Wells that it would need a waiver because of the ongoing elections that have put the decision-making process at a virtual standstill.

India is not the only country that is at the receiving end of sanctions announced by the US. The others are China, Japan, South Korea, Italy, Greece, Turkey and Taiwan.

With oil prices spiking to six-month high, the US sought to allay the concerns of significant buyers of Iranian oil by stating that it has held conversations with Saudi Arabia and the UAE to step up their oil output, in addition to increasing its own oil production. It is not clear whether the US diktat will also impact Indian investments in an Iranian port.

The US justified today’s “dramatically accelerated pressure campaign” on Iran by observing that it has made efforts to maintain well-supplied global oil markets by asking the UAE and Saudi Arabia to step up production.

Accelerating sanctions 

• Donald Trump on becoming US President had cancelled an Obama-era settlement with Iran and reimposed sanctions to coerce the regime to change “destructive behaviour”
• US, however, granted 8 buyers of Iranian oil, including India, to buy in limited quantities for 6 more months, which ends on May 2