TEHRAN - Sergei Ryabkov, the deputy foreign minister of Russia, has called on the United States to remove its sanctions on Iran’s oil sector so that Iran would be able to sell oil.

“The United States should lift its illegal sanctions that hinder the normal functioning of Iran's oil sector and the entire energy sector of this country,” the Persian-language Russian Sputnik news agency quoted Ryabkov as saying on Wednesday.

However, the Russian diplomat said that there is no sign that the White House may remove Iran’s oil sanctions.

“We do not see any signs that Washington is ready to move in this direction,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

Ryabkov expressed hope that the situation in Iran’s oil sector will be normalized over the next year. “We hope that the situation in this sector will be normalized, at least relatively, over the next year.”
U.S. President Donald Trump imposed sweeping sanctions on Iran, including a total oil ban, following his withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers on May 8, 2019.

The deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), had formally allowed Iran to sell oil. It still, on paper at least, allows Iran to sell oil. But the U.S. sanctions have scared away some of Iran’s oil buyers.

In the previous round of sanctions on Iran approved by the UN Security Council resolutions Iran was not banned from selling oil. Only the European Union boycotted oil import from Iran.
 
The Trump administration has said that it seeks to drive Iran’s oil exports to zero.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has recently said that Trump failed to cut Iran’s oil exports to zero. Speaking at an official meeting on Sunday, the president said, “Donald Trump’s dream of reducing Iran’s oil exports to zero has never come true and he will take that dream with him.”

Rouhani pointed out that the U.S. economic war on Iran has caused many problems for the Iranian oil and petrochemical exports, but Trump failed to zero out Iran’s oil exports.

SM/PA