While calling for dialogue, Washington imposes new sanctions against Iran

Tabnak – Although the US officials have recently claimed openness toward entering talks with Iran, Washington is still pursuing its policy of maximizing pressures against the Islamic Republic. In the latest representation of this policy, the US has imposed sanctions against Iran’s petrochemical sector.

The administration of US President Donald Trump has announced new sanctions on Iran, targeting the country’s petrochemical industry, including the country's largest petrochemical holding group, Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company (PGPIC).

The Treasury Department in a statement on Friday accused PGPIC of its financial support of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and said that sanctions are aimed to choke off financing to Iran’s largest and most profitable petrochemical group.

Treasury also imposed sanctions on the holding group's network of 39 subsidiary petrochemical companies and what it called "foreign-based sales agents.” It warned that international companies continuing to partner with PGPIC or subsidiaries and sales agents "will themselves be exposed to US sanctions."

"This action is a warning that we will continue to target holding groups and companies in the petrochemical sector and elsewhere that provide financial lifelines to the IRGC," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in the statement.

"By targeting this network we intend to deny funding to key elements of Iran’s petrochemical sector that provide support to the IRGC," he added.

The move comes against the backdrop of Washington’s frequent calls for entering new talks with Iran. After various such claims made by US President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also said this week that his country is ready to talk with Iran without pre-conditions.

However, In the Thursday meeting with his French counterpart Emanuel Macron, Trump once again defended the sanctions policy, claiming that the sanctions imposed by the US after pulling out of the nuclear agreement had crippled Iran's economy and left the nation in tatters.

"They’re doing very poorly as a nation," he said. "They’re failing as a nation. And I don't want them to fail as a nation. We can turn that around very quickly, but the sanctions have been extraordinary how powerful they’ve been, and other things. I understand they want to talk and if they want to talk that’s fine."

In a show of solidarity with the US, Macron listed four common priorities of the US and France in addressing "Iranian behavior": preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, reducing Iran's ballistic activity, containing Iran's regional activity and establishing peace in the region. "I think we do share the same objective on Iran," Macron said, calling for fresh negotiations to extend the terms of the JCPOA and to achieve those goals.

However, Iran says comments made by the French president will be of no help to saving the Iran nuclear deal and will just further deepen distrust among its signatories.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said "Under the current circumstances, their move to raise issues beyond the JCPOA will not only fail to help save the JCPOA, but will also prepare the grounds for further distrust among the parties remaining in the agreement.”

Last year, the US president withdrew Washington from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was reached between Iran and six world powers in 2015. Afterwards, Washington re-imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran that had been lifted under the deal.