US claims major companies are quitting Iran fearing sanctions

The US has claimed that as many as 50 companies are planning to cease doing business with Iran, signalling that its efforts to isolate Tehran are working, despite strong disagreements with its partners.

Groups such as Total, Peugeot and Siemens have announced they will halt dealings with Iran for fear of the impact of US sanctions – even though their home countries back their continued operations, reported the Financial Times.

Many of these companies were counting on a waiver from the US administration to continue doing business with Iran after the wind-down periods reaches the deadline date on 4 November. Trump however, has ignored demands from Europe and refused to grant exemptions to companies, even from his traditional allies.

Asked last week in a Fox News interview if he would sanction European companies that did business with Iran, Trump responded: “Yes, of course. That’s what we’re doing. Absolutely.”

The threats appear to have been headed by many of global brands. Reiterating the US position, Brian Hook, a state department official leading the push to isolate Iran, said to reporters yesterday: “We will be aggressively enforcing these provisions to lock up Iran’s assets overseas and deny the Iranian regime access to its hard currency.”

Read: Iran says to let private sector to export oil to help beat US sanctions

Explaining America’s intention, Hook added: “We have been clear with countries and companies around the world that we are bringing severe economic pressure on Iran until the regime changes its destabilising policies.” Hook added that many of the companies pulling out of Iran were in the energy and financial sectors.

Trump is determined to bring Iranian oil exports “down to zero as soon as possible”, according to Hook and his boss is looking to Saudi Arabia to increase production by another two million barrels a day to cover the shortfall from the loss of Iran’s 2.4 million barrels a day in the global energy market.

But it’s still not clear if Riyadh is willing to give in to Trump’s demands. According to the FT Riyadh had said only that it “affirmed” it had the capacity to produce extra rather than having promised to do so.

Read: Iran to reject Saudi-Russia proposal to increase oil production

It’s still not clear however, the extent to which President Trump can isolate Iran. China, Russia, India and Turkey are among the countries that have indicated they are unlikely to abide by US sanctions. India has told the Americans that “India follows only UN sanctions and not unilateral sanctions by any country.”

The other four partners to the Iran nuclear deal have also refused to cooperate with Trump. Later this week the foreign ministers of Iran, Germany, France, Russia, the UK and China, will attend a meeting in Geneva to discuss America’s exit from the treaty.