Trump admin to make Iran oil waivers harder to get

The Trump administration will hold countries to a higher standard if they want a waiver from the coming sanctions on importing Iranian oil.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Reuters Sunday that in order to avoid sanctions, countries will have to reduce their Iranian oil imports by more than the 20 percent that the Obama administration had dictated during the 2013 to 2015 sanctions.

“I would expect that if we do give waivers it will be significantly larger reductions,” Mnuchin told Reuters in Jerusalem at the start of a Middle East trip, the news outlet reported.

{mosads}Mnuchin also dismissed concerns that oil prices could spike if international markets are deprived of Iranian production.

“Oil prices have already gone up, so my expectation is that the oil market has anticipated what’s going on in the reductions,” he said. “I believe the information is already reflected in the price of oil.”

The Trump administration plans to restore Iran sanctions next month, as part of President Trump’s rejection of the Iran nuclear deal. Countries that do business with the United States will have to stop importing Iranian oil Nov. 4, or face sanctions themselves.

Iran is expected to cut its output by around two-thirds.

Mnuchin told Reuters that he doesn’t expect countries to immediately cut off oil imports on Nov. 4, but he hopes it will happen eventually.

“I don’t expect we will get to zero in November but I do expect we will eventually get to zero,” he said. “There have been already very significant reductions in advance of this date.”