US to Discuss Iranian Sanctions Compliance in Trip to UAE
The U.S. plans to send a delegation to the United Arab Emirates this week to discuss sanctions compliance and warn businesses and banks against facilitating Iranian commerce, a State Department spokesperson said. The delegation will be led by Andrea Gacki, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, and include other Treasury and State Department officials.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
The talks, which will also include UAE government officials, will look to address UAE companies that “facilitate noncompliant Iranian commerce that runs through or in some way touches the UAE,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Dec. 9. “It always takes work to see to it that the international community, our partners around the world, that private sector entities, financial institutions are doing everything they can to comply and to enforce U.S. and international sanctions to the fullest degree.”
Price said the U.S. has sent similar delegations to other countries in the last year and will continue to send more in the coming weeks. “It’s imperative that we keep this up because as new sanctions are applied, as bad actors attempt to circumvent sanctions,” Price said, “we always have to be adapting and tightening our sanctions enforcement to be one step ahead of those who would seek to circumvent that.”
The delegation will travel to the UAE amid reports that Iran continues to evade U.S. sanctions by selling oil to China (see 2106280029). Price declined to say whether a delegation has or is planning to travel to China, but he said the U.S. has had a “number of discussions” at the “senior-most levels” with China about its compliance with U.S. sanctions against Iran, including in the energy sector. “They understand our position on this,” Price said. “We’re going to continue to have those discussions in a diplomatic context with them.”
Those discussions are especially timely as Iran pushes for more sanctions relief under negotiations to rejoin the John Comprehensive Plan of Action. The latest round of indirect negotiations between the U.S. and Iran ended poorly after Iran demanded too many concessions and offered too little in return (see 2112060012), and Price suggested time is running out to strike a deal.
“I can assure you that if the Iranian regime suspects the United States of weakness, they will be sorely surprised,” Price said. “The runway is very short. There is not much time left.”
Even so, a return by all parties to the JCPOA, from which the U.S. withdrew in 2018 under the Trump administration, is still the “most advantageous pathway” to denying Iran nuclear weapons capabilities, Price said. But he also said the U.S. is concerned Iran is using the negotiations to stall as it builds out its nuclear program.
“It is a concern that we share,” Price said. “The only thing these provocations and these escalations will do is to bring us closer to the point of a potential crisis. And we are not looking for a crisis.”