China’s Foreign Ministry criticized the U.S.’s decision to impose more Iran sanctions last week, saying the measures, which affected some Chinese entities, should be reversed. Along with Iranian officials and metal companies, the U.S. sanctions targeted a Beijing-based company for buying Iranian steel and a China-based company for managing a vessel that transported the steel (see 2001100050). “We urge the U.S. to cease immediately the wrongful sanctions on Chinese businesses,” a ministry spokesman said during a Jan. 13 press conference. “We will continue to staunchly defend Chinese enterprises' legitimate rights and interests.” China said it has been dealing with Iran for a “long time” and “such cooperation, which is justified and lawful and doesn't harm any third party's interests, should be respected and protected.”
President Donald Trump issued an executive order expanding U.S. sanctions authority against Iran and the Treasury Department announced a series of new Iran sanctions, including measures against senior Iranian officials, metal companies and a vessel. The executive order grants the U.S. the authority to impose a series of new primary and secondary sanctions against people and companies involved with Iran’s construction, mining, manufacturing and textiles sectors, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said during a Jan. 10 press conference. While the executive order only mentioned those four sectors, additional Iranian sectors may be sanctioned, Mnuchin said.
China’s Foreign Ministry criticized a report released this week by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China that called for U.S. sanctions on Chinese officials, saying the commission has no “objectivity or credibility whatsoever.” The report, issued Jan. 8, also called for greater U.S. export controls on surveillance technologies being sent to China and urged the Trump administration to place more Chinese companies and agencies on the Commerce Department’s Entity List due to their involvement in human rights violations (see 2001080039).
President Donald Trump threatened sanctions against Iraq following a Jan. 5 vote by the country's parliament to expel U.S. troops. The threat comes amid growing tension in the Middle East as Iran further decommitted from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and Europe scrambled to keep the deal from disintegrating, which could trigger European snapback sanctions against Iran.
The State Department issued a Dec. 16 sanctions advisory about exports of graphite electrodes and needle coke to Iran, saying those materials subject exporters to “significant sanctions risk.” Both materials are “essential” to Iran’s steel industry, the State Department said, which is sanctioned by the U.S. Sanctions extend to producers and exporters of the materials along with “port operators, shippers, shipping companies, and vessel operators and owners,” who may be subject to blocking sanctions, even if the intended end-user is not in Iran’s steel sector.
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for Dec. 9-13 in case you missed them.
About a year into the Trump administration's maximum pressure sanctions campaign on Iran, the effort has done nothing to bring Iran to the negotiating table, panelists said during a Dec. 12 Atlantic Council event. U.S. sanctions have instead emboldened a more aggressive Iran, panelists said, which is growing increasingly frustrated with its unwilling European trade partners and will likely continue breaching the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
An Iranian businessman was sentenced to 46 months in prison for illegally exporting carbon fiber from the U.S. to Iran, the Justice Department said Nov. 14. Behzad Pourghannad worked with two others between 2008 and 2013 to export the carbon fiber to Iran from third countries using falsified documents and front companies, the agency said.
A Lebanese energy equipment company was fined $368,000 by the Bureau of Industry and Security after it illegally reexported generators to Syria, according to a settlement agreement signed Nov. 27. Ghaddar Machinery allegedly committed 20 violations of the Export Administration Regulations from 2014 to 2016, totaling about $730,000 worth of exports, BIS said. Ghaddar agreed to pay the penalty in five installments through November 2021. Failure to make the payments could result in more penalties, according to the settlement agreement, including a two-year denial of export privileges.
Apple was fined about $465,000 for violations of the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Sanctions Regulations after it hosted, sold and “facilitated the transfer” of software applications and content belonging to a sanctioned company, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said in a Nov. 25 notice. Apple allegedly dealt in “the property and interests” of SIS d.o.o., a Slovenian software company added to OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals List in 2015.