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Iran oil projects reined in because of lack of funds

February 18, 2020 at 8:03 pm

An Iranian oil tanker, 17 July 2019 [Nachoman-au/Wikipedia]

Iran has had to reduce oil production projects because of a lack of funds and a drop in income from oil exports, Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said on Tuesday, according to the official IRNA news agency.

“All attacks are against us and the income from oil exports has been reduced. We have reduced many production projects because we don’t have money at all and side projects have been closed for a long time,” Zanganeh said, as reported by Reuters.

US President Donald Trump pulled out of a multilateral nuclear deal with Iran in 2018 and reimposed sanctions that have hammered the Islamic Republic’s economy and reduced crude oil exports by more than 80%.

Rouhani: Iran will never yield to US pressure

Trump hopes the sanctions will limit Tehran’s ballistic missile program and influence across the Middle East. Tehran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

Iran and the United States stormed to the edge of a war in early January when Tehran’s most prominent general, Qassem Soleimani, was killed in a US drone strike on his convoy in Baghdad.

Tehran responded by launching missile attacks on US targets in Iraq.

Read: Khamenei says Iran should increase military might to prevent war