GENEVA/LONDON: Iran said on Tuesday it had so far been able to sell as much oil as it needs despite US pressure, but it urged European countries opposed to US sanctions to do more to shield Iran, as Russia and Turkey also voiced their objections.

The United States on Monday restored sanctions targeting Iran’s oil, banking and transport sectors and threatened more action to stop what Washington called its “outlaw” policies - steps that Tehran called economic warfare and vowed to defy. The measures are part of a wider effort by US President Donald Trump to curb Tehran’s missile and nuclear programmes and diminish the Islamic Republic’s influence in the Middle East, notably its support for proxies in Syria, Yemen and Lebanon.

Trump is targeting Iran’s main source of revenue - its oil exports - as well as its financial sector, essentially making 50 Iranian banks and their subsidiaries off-limits to foreign banks, on pain of losing access to the US financial system.

“The Americans constantly said they would reduce the sale of Iran’s oil to zero but I have to say that, so far, we have been able to sell our required amounts of oil,” Tasnim news agency quoted Iranian Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri as saying.

“The Americans, with the help of propaganda, don’t see the realities.”

EXPORTS DOWN

Industry estimates suggest Iran’s oil exports have in fact fallen by 40-60 percent since Trump said in May that he would reimpose sanctions, but 180-day exemptions for Iran’s biggest oil clients could mean they rise again after November.

President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that Turkey, one of those countries, would not abide by the sanctions, which he said were “aimed at unbalancing the world”.

Jahangiri said he had spoken to a handful of managers from companies on the US sanctions list, and that some had already formulated plans on how to deal with the measures.

However, Iran’s oil minister wrote to OPEC’s secretary general calling for two committees that monitor an output deal with non-OPEC countries to be scrapped, accusing them of siding with the United States.

The head of Iran’s central bank, Abdolnasser Hemmati, said Iranian banks should use their previous experience dealing with sanctions to support the foreign trade process and financial transfers”, according to the state news agency, IRNA. The European Union, France, Germany, Britain and Russia, participants with the United States in the 2015 deal that lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme, have all objected to the reimposition of sanctions.

SIDESTEPPING SANCTIONS

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Madrid that Washington had used “unacceptable methods” to force the SWIFT global financial network to cut off Iranian banks, and that there would be still ways to cooperate economically with Iran.

The EU is seeking to launch a “special purpose vehicle” (SPV) to sidestep the US financial system by using an EU intermediary to handle trade with Iran.—Reuters