TEHRAN – Donald Trump's latest attempt to move towards eliminating Iran's oil exports met with a rebuke from government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani, who declared that Iranians would continue to sell their oil as they had for the past decades, undeterred by Washington's unrelenting sanctions.

"Under the sanctions regime, several ministries are on the front lines, with the Ministry of Oil being a key target. The hasty and targeted sanctions against Mr. Paknejad demonstrate their concern about the Ministry's activities and effectiveness,” Mohajerani wrote on X. 

On Thursday, the U.S. Treasury Department issued sanctions against Iran’s Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad, and some vessels that it said are part of a fleet involved in the Iranian crude oil exports.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement that the sanctions designated Paknejad and three entities engaged in the Iranian oil trade in China, and named three shipping vessels as blocked property for their use in the transactions.

The fact that the U.S. needs to impose new and updated sanctions suggests that previous efforts have failed, Mohajerani noted. “Oil exports will continue; we will not surrender Iran's share of the global oil market.”

The new sanctions were announced a day after Trump’s long-awaited letter was finally delivered to Iran via a visiting Emirati diplomat. The president has been saying that he wants a new deal with Iran on its nuclear program ever since unraveling one signed in 2015. He has meanwhile attempted to straddle Iran economically through the “maximum pressure campaign” beginning during his first term in 2018. 

The maximum pressure campaign created a sharp plunge in Iran’s oil exports in the beginning. But Iran managed to pick up on sales in the following years, with its biggest customer being China. China imported a record amount of Iranian oil in February after Trump ordered his administration to bring Iran’s oil exports to “zero”.

Analysts point out that after decades of debilitating sanctions, Iran has now honed the art of circumventing or neutralizing them.