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No Evidence of Russia Buying Iran's Oil in Claimed Defiance of US Sanctions

Michael Lipin

   This article originated in [1]VOA's Persian Service.Danila Galperovich
   of VOA's Russian Service contributed.

   A Russian bid to defy U.S. sanctions on Iran appears to have failed,
   with Russian energy experts saying Moscow has made no recent purchases
   of Iranian oil as part of a sputtering 2014 deal with Tehran.

   Russian state media have said that under the August 2014 memorandum,
   which was never published in full, Moscow agreed to buy Iranian oil in
   order to deliver it to international customers, while Iran would use
   the payments received from Russia to buy and import Russian goods.
   Iranian state media have said only half of the received Russian funds
   would be used to buy Russian imports.

   The two sides reached the agreement on what they called an "oil for
   goods" program at a time when Iran was under a previous round of
   international sanctions against its oil exports. Russia said the deal
   was intended to boost trade ties with Iran, a longtime purchaser of
   Russian weapons. It was not aimed at delivering Iranian crude to the
   territory of Russia, already one of the world's top oil producers.

   Moscow announced a brief suspension of the program in 2016 after having
   failed to get it operational. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak
   said [2]the program was no longer necessary because oil sanctions on
   Iran had been lifted that year. The sanctions relief was Iran's reward
   for a 2015 deal with world powers, in which it promised to restrict
   nuclear activities that could be diverted to making bombs.

   Russia began talks with Iran to revive the program in February 2017
   after the inauguration a month earlier of U.S. President Donald Trump,
   who had campaigned on withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal. In May
   2017, Russia and Iran declared a new agreement for Moscow to buy
   100,000 barrels of Iranian oil per day, equivalent to 5 million tons of
   oil per year (1 metric ton equals 7.33 barrels).

   Russian media said Moscow secured its first, and so far only, Iranian
   oil delivery in November 2017, in the form of a tanker carrying just 1
   millionbarrels, or about 136,000 tons, of crude. They did not specify
   to which country Moscow's energy ministry re-sold the oil through
   Russian state-owned trading unit Promsyrioimport.

   The Russian state news agency Interfax said Novak later
   acknowledgedthat he was having problems finding buyers for the Iranian
   oil, telling journalists in March 2018 that Moscow had stopped taking
   deliveries from Tehran due to a "lack of contracts with end customers"
   for the crude.

   In further complications for Russia, Washington sanctioned
   [3]Promsyrioimport in November 2018, accusing it of helping Iran to
   make illicit shipments of millions of barrels of oil to Syrian
   President Bashar al-Assad's government, in defiance of Western
   sanctions on Damascus. The Trump administration also re-imposed U.S.
   sanctions on Iranian oil exports that month to pressure Tehran into
   negotiating a new deal to end its perceived malign behaviors.

   In the past year, Russian Energy Minister Novak has made several
   attempts to portray the "oil for goods" program as operational, but
   without disclosing evidence of any Russian purchases of Iranian oil.

   In September 2018, Interfaxquoted Novak as saying the program had been
   "resumed." In his next public comment on the program while visiting
   Iran in June, Interfax saidNovak confirmed that Iran has imported
   Russian goods using proceeds from past "deliveries" of oil to Moscow.
   But he did not confirm any new delivery of Iranian oil to Russia since
   the apparent test-case transfer of November 2017.

   Earlier this month, Novak reiterated Russia's rejection of U.S.
   sanctions that have targeted Iran's ability to sell oil and other
   commodities. In an interview with U.S. TV network [4]CNBC, he called
   the sanctions "unlawful."

References

   1. https://ir.voanews.com/
   2. https://tass.com/economy/1000384
   3. https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm553
   4. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/02/russia-energy-minister-novak-calls-sanctions-against-iran-unlawful.html

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