New round of sanctions imposed on Iran after attack

The United States on Friday imposed another round of sanctions on Tehran, including on Iran’s central bank and a development fund, following last week’s attack on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia that Riyadh and Washington have blamed on Iran.

US President Donald Trump outlined the action to reporters at the White House on Friday after first announcing his plan for further sanctions earlier this week on Twitter.

The sanctions target the Central Bank of Iran, the National Development Fund of Iran and Etemad Tejarate Pars Co, an Iranian company that US officials said is used to conceal financial transfers for Iranian military purchases, the US Treasury Department said in a statement.

Given previous US efforts to cut off funds to Iran, it was not immediately clear how much more impact the latest sanctions would have.

Asked about the possibility of a military response on Iran, Trump said the United States was always prepared and that a military strike was always a possibility. Friday’s action is the “highest level of sanctions,” Trump said.

Iran has denied any involvement in the Sept. 14 attack, which shook global oil markets and ratcheted up tensions between Washington and Tehran. On Friday, Saudi officials took media to inspect the affected facilities.

“Iran’s brazen attack against Saudi Arabia is unacceptable,” US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement announcing Friday’s action.

Trump, who spoke to reporters at the White House alongside visiting Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, has said he wants a peaceful solution to the conflict following the weekend oil attacks. His secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has called the attacks an “act of war.” In recent weeks, Trump had weighed the possibility of easing sanctions on Iran as he sought to meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who is scheduled to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York next week.

“We are continuing the maximum pressure campaign,” Mnuchin told reporters at the White House. “This is very big. We’ve now cut off all source of funds to Iran.” Saudi Arabia on Friday took media on a tour of oil facilities damaged by attacks that Washington and Riyadh blame on Iran, showing melted pipes and burnt equipment, as Tehran vowed wide retaliation if heightened tensions boil over into hostilities.

The kingdom sees the Sept. 14 strikes on its Khurais and Abqaiq facilities − the worst attack on Gulf oil infrastructure since Iraq’s Saddam Hussein torched Kuwaiti oilfields in 1991 — as a test of global will to preserve international order.

Asked about the possibility of a military response on Iran, Trump said the United States was always prepared and that a military strike was always a possibility.

Iran denies involvement in the attack, which initially halved oil output from Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest petroleum exporter. Responsibility was claimed by Yemen’s Houthi movement, an Iran-aligned group fighting a Saudi-led alliance in Yemen’s four-year-old conflict.

At Abqaiq, one of the world’s largest oil processing plants, reporters saw a punctured, blackened stabilizer tower that Khalid Buraik, Saudi Aramco vice-president for southern area oil operations, said would have to be replaced.

As reporters examined a shattered separator dome draped with a red tape labelled “Danger”, Buraik said 15 towers and facilities had been hit at Abqaiq, but it would regain full output capacity by the end of September.

At Khurais oilfield to the west, which the Saudi defence ministry says was hit by four missiles, reporters were shown repair work under way, with cranes erected around two burnt-out stabilisation columns, which form part of oil-gas separation units, and melted pipes.

“We are confident we are going back to the full production we were at before the attack (on Khurais) by the end of September,” Fahad Abdulkarim, Aramco’s general manager for the southern area oil operation, told reporters.

“We are working 24/7...This is a beehive.” Workmen wearing red high visibility jackets and white helmets moved through the site, a large compound the size of several football stadiums containing interconnected structures of piping and towers.

Agencies