US official: Iran oil export sanctions to be lifted as it was selling the oil anyway

A senior US official explains the US decision to issue a waiver of its sanctions on Iran oil exports.

The official briefing reporters claims that Iran had still been able to sell oil regardless and was “giving China a massive discount… regardless of whether we left a single other sanction.”

The administration “agreed that it’s absurd to sanction Iranian oil in such a way that they are still allowed to sell that oil,” he says.

The US had previously insisted that Iran would not receive any sanctions relief unless Tehran made concessions in the subsequent nuclear talks that the MOU is kicking off.

But in going over the text of the MOU on the briefing call, the senior US official reveals that the sanctions waiver is actually in the text itself and states that it will be “immediately” applied.

A second senior US official on the phone briefing argues that the war caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damages to Iran, while the relief from the sanctions waiver will only be in the “single digit billions of dollars.”

“It’s not that significant in the scheme of things. They were able to (export oil) anyway by opening the strait, so we thought that was actually a fair concession to give them, as it also helps bring down global oil prices,” the US official adds.