India's Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar held talks Tuesday in Tehran, becoming the second senior Indian minister to visit Iran this week.
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◢ Iran overtook Russia to emerge as the top buyer of Indian tea last year, after sanctions against the Islamic Republic halted imports other than specially negotiated deals. India and Iran have been trading through a rupee-based bank account to bypass restrictions imposed by the U.S.
◢ Tehran and Delhi have agreed to accelerate the development of an important Iranian port, India's foreign minister said during a visit to the sanctions-hit Islamic republic on Monday. Chabahar port—being jointly developed by India, Iran and Afghanistan—is on the Indian Ocean about 100 kilometres (62 miles) west of the Pakistan border.
◢ India has ended all imports of oil from Iran, its ambassador in Washington said Wednesday, becoming the latest country to grudgingly comply with threatened US sanctions. India had already sharply decreased its imports from Iran and bought one million tons of crude in April, the last month before Washington stepped up its pressure campaign against Tehran and ended all exemptions to oil sanctions.
◢ The end on Thursday of US sanctions waivers for purchases of Iranian oil is likely to hit India's economy hard, increasing fuel costs and quickening inflation, analysts say. "US sanctions on Iran is a double whammy for India after the Venezuelan sanctions," said Vandana Hari, founder of Vanda Insights, a global energy markets portal.
◢ With the web of US sanctions tightening, Iran faces a host of challenges as it looks to an isolated port in the country's far southeast to maintain the flow of goods. The port in Chabahar, only about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the Pakistan border and located on the Indian Ocean, is Iran's largest outside the Gulf.
◢ Sanctioned by the U.S., Iran has found a sweet way to use the cash it is accumulated from trading oil: Purchase sugar from India. The Government Trading Corporation of Iran will buy 150,000 tons of raw sugar from Indian mills for delivery in March-April, paying in rupees from escrow accounts held at UCO Bank.
◢ Iran will boost trade with India as the European Union struggles to find a way to circumvent a fresh US embargo on Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Tuesday. Brussels is working on a payment mechanism to keep financial transactions flowing with Iran, after the US ditched the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran earlier this year and reintroduced a raft of sanctions on the country.
◢ The United States said Tuesday it would exempt Iran's Indian-backed port of Chabahar from new sanctions on Tehran, recognizing the value of the project to Afghanistan. Iran late last year inaugurated the port on the Indian Ocean which provides a key supply route to landlocked Afghanistan and allows India to bypass its historic enemy Pakistan.
◢ The United States will exempt China, India and Japan from oil sanctions on Iran, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday, while vowing to be "relentless" in pressuring Tehran. Hours after sweeping sanctions were reimposed following the US withdrawal from a denuclearization deal, Pompeo said eight countries would be at least temporarily exempt from the ban on buying Iranian oil due to special circumstances or so as not to disrupt energy markets.
◢ The US administration likely will enable some countries to continue importing oil from Iran in the short term, despite Washington's maximum pressure campaign against Tehran, White House national security adviser John Bolton said today. The State Department is expected to provide such exemptions before the full brunt of US sanctions pressure begins on 5 November, even though the scope of waivers is yet undetermined.
◢ Iran faces a potentially crushing loss of oil exports when US sanctions return in November, but the impact could be blunted by its experience of working around embargoes. When Iran faced its toughest international sanctions between 2012 and 2015, analysts say it found a number of creative solutions, from repainting and renaming ships to switching off their tracking devices.
◢ Iran is selling oil and gas at a discount to Asian customers as it prepares for the return of US sanctions, state news agency IRNA reported on Monday. The "informed source" in Iran's oil ministry did not give details of the discount, but sought to downplay the move as common industry practice. "Discount is part of the nature of the global markets being offered by all oil exporters," the source told IRNA.
◢ The US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley on Thursday urged India to reconsider its ties to Iran, one of its key energy suppliers, as fresh US sanctions on buyers of Iranian oil loom. Washington has stepped up pressure on major Iranian customers to stop importing its oil, warning no trading partner will be exempt from new economic sanctions when they bite from November 4.
◢ India will keep trading with Iran and Venezuela despite the threat of fallout from US sanctions against the two countries, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said Monday. Swaraj, asked at a news conference whether US action against Iran and Venezuela would damage India, said the country would not make foreign policy "under pressure"
