The U.S. State Department has refuted a statement made by a senior Iranian official that the country had agreed to lift all sanctions on Iran's oil and shipping industry.
"During negotiations of this complexity, negotiators try to draft text that capture the main issues, but again, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed," a State Department spokesman told Reuters.
The statement, made on condition of anonymity, came in response to another one, made by the chief of staff of Iran's President earlier this week.
"An agreement has been reached to remove all insurance, oil and shipping sanctions that were imposed by (former U.S. President Donald) Trump," Mahmoud Vaezi said, as carried by Iranian state media and then quoted by Reuters.
"About 1,040 Trump-era sanctions will be lifted under the agreement. It was also agreed to lift some sanctions on individuals and members of the supreme leader's inner circle," the official added.
Reports of the statement made sure to note that the Western nations participating in the U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations were a lot more guarded in their opinions of the talks, noting that there was no final agreement yet.
"We are making progress but there are still some nuts to crack," Germany's Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told media this week as the negotiations are on pause for a while.
"Difficult decisions will need to be made in the coming days or weeks if these negotiations were not to move forward," French Junior Foreign Minister Franck Riester said, as quoted by Reuters.
Oil prices have remained relatively unchanged amid this series of contradictory signals about the nuclear deal, possibly reflecting a guarded sentiment among traders, too. While the benchmarks jumped soon after Vaezi's statement, they quickly retreated, even though the EIA served markets another crude oil inventory drop-and a sizeable one at that.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry. More
Comments
I was proven right. The US State Department has refuted the news.
Since the start of the indirect negotiations between the P5+1 group and Iran in Vienna I have been saying that we may never see a lifting of US sanctions against Iran even by 2023 or ever. The reason is that the positions of the United States and Iran are irreconcilable.
Iran will never agree to any limitations on its nuclear and ballistic missile development programmes and the United States will never accede to any nuclear deal that doesn’t specifically add new limitations on Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes and therein lies the problem.
Iran will soon be in possession of nuclear warheads hence its need for long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying them. The United States, Israel and the US allies in the Gulf are determined to prevent this happening.
That is why I keep saying that the positions of the United States and Iran are irreconcilable and therefore US sanctions may never ever be lifted.
Dr Mamdouh G Salameh
International Oil Economist
Visiting Professor of Energy Economics at ESCP Europe Business School, London
Of course with US Treasury Yields still at all time record lows...well, talk about the Mother of all Financial Bubbles if those rates suddenly explode higher.
We've already had one massive sell off in US Treasuries to start 2021. With US oil prices and natural gas prices and coal prices this high internal cash flows will explode higher. Might explain why Tesla stock is suddenly going through the roof again.
Anyhow I reiterate long $ibm International Business Machines
Strong buy
"Never sell on War news" and the current headlines crossing my news feed are absolutely off the charts on that one no doubt.