Reduction of Oil Imports from Iran; Will Buyers Comply with Restrictions?

The U.S. State Department, which had previously stated that it expects oil imports from Iran by purchasing countries to reach zero by November, has announced that it will work with these countries to encourage as many customers as possible to completely halt their oil purchases from Iran within an unspecified timeframe. One senior official at the State Department had previously stated that no exemptions would be granted to countries importing oil from Iran, but recently another senior official, whose name has not been disclosed, said that exemptions would be decided on a case-by-case basis for Iranian oil customers. It had been previously mentioned that Washington is trying to gradually reduce oil purchases from Iran. Sanctions imposed before the nuclear agreement had limited Iran's oil exports to one million barrels per day. In recent months, Iran has been exporting about 2.5 million barrels of oil and gas condensates daily. The International Monetary Fund, in its last statistics published before the U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA, announced that Iran had nearly $50 billion in oil exports last year. Donald Trump, the President of the United States, officially announced on May 8 that the United States would withdraw from the nuclear agreement with Iran and reinstate the suspended sanctions against Iran. European countries say they want to preserve the JCPOA and are trying to obtain exemptions from the U.S. for continuing their business activities with Iran. Iran has stated that it will cease implementing the JCPOA if it faces renewed sanctions from the U.S. This week's program has addressed how feasible it is to limit oil purchases from Iran and what impact it would have on Iran's economy, featuring Sohrab Sobhani, an economist and former economics professor at Georgetown University, and Mehrdad Emadi, an economic advisor to European institutions.