US Lawmakers Warn Against Iran Boosting Oil Revenues Despite Sanctions
In a letter to the US Treasury Department, 11 members of the House of Representatives warned against Iran’s illicit strategies to circumvent oil sanctions.
In a letter to the US Treasury Department, 11 members of the House of Representatives warned against Iran’s illicit strategies to circumvent oil sanctions.
Iran’s actions are “compromising the safety and integrity of the international maritime industry and threatening our national security interests,” read the bipartisan letter.
Iran-backed Houthis have been attacking shipping in the Red Sea since mid-November, endangering lives and international commerce.
The representatives added that the Islamic Republic is on the verge of reaching its pre-sanctions revenues with selling 1.5 barrels per day, a number which is unprecedented over the past five years.
Buying 1.05 barrels per day, China is still the main customer of Iranian oil, the letter went on to say.
The representatives cited United Against Nuclear Iran’s recent warning that 370 foreign-flagged “ghost ships” are suspected of contributing to Tehran’s circumvention of oil bans over the past two years.
“This number is a 300-unit increase from its previous finding in November 2020,” said the letter.
The representatives also called for sanctions against the ghost ships involved in Iran’s illicit oil transfer.
Mohsen Khojasteh-Mehr, the CEO of the National Iranian Oil Company announced on Tuesday a 60% growth in the country's oil production over the past two years in spite of global sanctions.
According to a Congressional hearing earlier in the month, Iran has quadrupled its oil revenues since President Joe Biden took office, helping the regime better fund its malign activities.
“The Biden administration has taken a consistently weak approach to enforcing the energy sanctions that would have the strongest economic impact on Russia, Iran and Venezuela,” said Rep. Blaine Lutkemeyer, chairing the hearing.
German lawmaker Norbert Röttgen has accused his country’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, of lying to the international community that the IRGC cannot be outlawed in Europe.
In a significant escalation of the sparring between Röttgen and the Green party controlled foreign ministry, the Christian Democratic party MP took to X on Monday to announce: “Baerbock has been deceiving the public for almost a year and is deliberately telling a untruth in the Bundestag regarding the expert opinion report on the terrorist listing of the Revolutionary Guards. This in no way says that listing is currently not possible.”
Baerbock, who claims to have a “feminist foreign policy,” has mirrored the comments of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell for nearly a year that "as of now, we don't have legal grounds in the EU to list the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization."
Baerbock, whose Green party has faced criticism over the years for embracing an appeasement policy toward the clerical regime in Tehran, argued that an expert opinion of the European Council lawyers prevented the IRGC from being sanctioned.
Röttgen linked in X post to an article in the left-wing German paper Die Tageszeitung (known in Germany as taz) that reported it obtained a classified EU expert opinion that established Baerbock lied to the international community.
According to die taz, the EU expert opinion states the legal service of the European Council determined that legal decisions outside the EU determining that the IRGC engaged in acts of terror could be used as a basis for banning it. “If the Council relies on a decision of a third country, it must ensure that this decision was taken in compliance with the rights of the defense and the right to effective legal protection,” the opinion reads.
Borrell appeared to have also misled the international community in January, when he claimed that an EU legal decision is necessary to designate the IRGC as a terrorist entity. Röttgen and counter-terrorism experts such as Matthew Levitt have mounted significant evidence to show that Borell and Baerbock are not on solid ground with their arguments against a ban of the IRGC.
The German paper asked a number of legal experts for their assessment of the classified EU expert opinion. “The positions of the legal service do not provide a convincing justification against the terrorist listing. The impression is that the federal government is hiding behind weak legal arguments,” said Matthias Herdegen from the University of Bonn.
The EU’s classified legal opinion presented legal verdicts from the US in 2020 and 2018 that showed the IRGC was responsible for blowing up the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996. However, the EU said the cases from Khobar are not current enough to form the basis for a ban of the IRGC.
Christian Marxsen, Professor of Public Law and International Law at the Humboldt University in Berlin, told die taz, “The report discusses the legal requirements for listing as a terrorist organization…there is no statement in the report as to whether there are other points of reference – for example further court or administrative decisions from other countries – for such a listing.”
Iran International reported in late November that a German court convicted a Pakistani man in 2017 who was paid by the IRGC to engage in an assassination attempt of pro-Israel advocates.
The Quds Force—a part of the IRGC—paid Pakistani Syed Mustaf at least 2,052 euros from July 2015 to 2016 to spy on Jewish and Israeli institutions and carry out the assassination plot. The case of Mustaf could be used by the EU to outlaw the IRGC, according to experts.
The taz reported that “There are numerous voices in and around the Foreign Office who reject the Revolutionary Guard's terrorist listing.” One voice is Guido Steinberg who is a Senior Associate at the Middle East and Africa Research Division of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP).
Steinberg told the German magazine Stern in July that he is against the listing of the IRGC as a terrorist organization because the IRGC is a normal military force. This is an argument that Tehran often uses despite the fact that the IRGC has a large intelligence organization engaged in domestic repression and also has its own espionage network abroad.
The US government classified the IRGC a terrorist entity in 2019.
The German Institute for International and Security advises the German foreign ministry and has been embroiled in pro-Hamas and antisemitism scandals this year. In July, Israel’s embassy in Berlin slammed the institute’s researcher Muriel Asseburg for suggesting in an interview with a hardcore anti-Israel activist that terrorism attacks against Israelis can be dismissed as not significant and there should be support for Palestinians' right to "violent resistance" against the "Israeli occupation.”
The German Institute for International and Security has been plagued by its efforts to promote a partnership with Iran’s regime. In 2008, a Wall Street Journal opinion article stated Volker Perthes, the former director of the controversial institute has “been lobbying for more than two years for a ‘strategic partnership’ with a Holocaust-denying regime that sponsors international terror and suppresses its own people.”
Press queries sent to Baerbock’s spokesman Sebastian Fischer and spokeswoman, Tittel, as well as to German interior minister spokesman Björn Bowinkelmann ,were not returned. Iran International phone calls to both ministries were not answered.
Johan Floderus, detained in April 2022 during a vacation in Iran on charges of espionage, is now navigating a legal process marked by little transparency and what appears to be a hostage situation. He has been in detention for more than 600 days.
Iranian officials vehemently slammed a Swedish appeals court for upholding a life sentence for Hamid Nouri, a former prison official who was convicted earlier this year for his role in the massacre of up to 5,000 political prisoners in 1988. The Swedish verdict upholding the sentence was announced on Wednesday, as Tehran used pressures and threats to influence the appeal decision.
Now, Floderus is accused of “corruption on earth”, a serious Sharia charge that can lead even to a death sentence. This particular charge is often used by the Iranian regime against pollical opponents. He is accused of espionage, but the case, as many other similar detentions of foreigners in Iran, is wrapped in a lack of transparency.
He was told in the court on Wednesday that "These accusations are based on intelligence surveillance by Iranian security forces, scrutiny of messages, emails, monitoring of your mobile phone, your travels to various countries, your presence in Iran's border cities, your communications, trips to occupied territories [Israel], and other pieces of evidence."
According to Iranian media, Floderus did not accept the allegations attributed to himself and emphasized: “The issued warrant has a general and abstract nature and has no direct connection with me."
Judge Iman Afshari also accused Floderus of having connections with Swedish military institutions, but this EU diplomat emphasized that after completing his 13-month military service, he had no ties to Swedish military, intelligence, or security institutions."
Iran’s foreign ministry and Judicial authorities have categorically rejected the Swedish appeal court’s decision regarding Hamid Nouri. Naser Kanaani, the foreign ministry spokesperson responded to the confirmation of the life imprisonment sentence for Nouri, saying, "Iran fundamentally finds the verdicts of the lower and appellate courts regarding Hamid Nouri unacceptable and strongly condemns them."
Kazem Gharibabadi, the Secretary of the Human Rights Headquarters of Iran’s Judiciary, threatened that “Sweden's actions in this regard will not be without cost.” He made a bizarre statement that “In this case, the English were also involved, and it was not a case solely decided by Sweden."
The Floderus case is similar to the conviction of Assadollah Assadi, an Iranian diplomat convicted for terrorism in Belgium but released in May after Iran detained a Belgian traveller and accused him of espionage. Aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele spent 455 days in Iranian detention facing an uncertain future until Belgium gave in and released the convicted Iranian official.
At the time, many warned that such a prisoner exchange would set a dangerous precedent for other Westerners. The Islamic Republic of Iran has a history of detaining foreigners and dual national to use the as bargaining leverage against Western countries.
