Iran says latest sanctions show US campaign against it fails (Representation)
Washington:
The United States imposed sanctions on five Iranian ship captains who delivered oil to Venezuela on Wednesday, while Washington has put pressure on President Nicolas Maduro, whose government he considers illegitimate.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Iranian-flagged tankers, which had delivered 1.5 million barrels of gasoline and oil to Venezuela in recent weeks, had been blacklisted by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States Treasury.
“Seafarers doing business with Iran and Venezuela will face the consequences of the United States of America,” said Pompeo.
Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Affairs Jorge Arreaza responded on Twitter, calling the move “further evidence of hatred of (US President Donald) Trump’s hawks against Venezuela.”
“As a result of today’s sanctions, the assets of these captains will be frozen. Their careers and prospects will suffer from this designation,” said Pompeo.
“The rogue regimes of Caracas and Tehran are united by their penchant for the repression of their people, corruption, personal enrichment and blatant mismanagement of the wealth of their people,” added Pompeo.
Iran has said the latest sanctions show the failure of the US campaign against it.
“The desperate US measures against Iranian individuals … only point to the miserable failure of the so-called” maximum pressure “,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi tweeted.
“Despite American pressure, #Iran & #Venezuela remain determined to counter illegal American sanctions,” he added.
The move comes as Venezuela on Wednesday accused the United States of “provoking” after an American warship steamed near South American territorial waters the day before.
The ship has sailed in an area that “the illegitimate Maduro regime pretends to falsely control,” US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said in a statement.
(This story has not been edited by GalacticGaming staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
