“We’ll find them and sanction them, and they won’t be
doing any business with the United States,” said U.S.
Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland.
(February 8, 2019 / JNS) The United States on
Thursday warned those who seek to do business with
Tehran, thereby violating U.S. sanctions on the
regime.
“Anyone actually using it to trade on anything
other than humanitarian activity is going to be
sanctioned by the United States,” said U.S. Ambassador
to the European Union Gordon Sondland. “We’ll find
them and sanction them, and they won’t be doing any
business with the United States.”
This threat implies that the European effort to
create a special purpose vehicle to circumvent U.S.
sanctions on Iran will “will sit there and will be
little used,” he said.
Sondland’s words follow the U.S. State Department
saying late last month that it is “closely following”
the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges, or
INSTEX, that enables European nations to still do
transactions with the Islamic Republic despite U.S.
financial sanctions. INSTEX was set up by Germany, the
United Kingdom and France (the three European
signatories of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal,
collectively referred to as the E3).
This attempted workaround is expected to be
discussed next week at a meeting of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization, reported Bloomberg.