The Trump administration fears Russia could help Tehran evade US sanctions by buying up Iranian oil and reselling it as its own, Financial Times writes.
"Iran might be pushing the idea of Russia selling their oil on the world market to evade sanctions," the newspaper cited the Trump administration official as saying.
In addition, the official said that he would "discourage Russia from even considering this". "It would be in Russia’s best interests not to facilitate Iranian evasion of US sanctions," the official added.
The department spokesperson stated that their goal remains to get to zero oil imports from Iran as quickly as possible, ideally by 4 November.
The recent weeks have seen US officials preparing to provide special reduction exemptions to some oil consumers of Iran. This has increased the prospect of Iran continuing its oil exports to countries that indicate that they have reduced the total oil consumption from Tehran.
"The United States is in the midst of an internal process to consider SRE waivers for individual countries," the FT cited state department spokesperson as saying.
The spokesperson further added: "We are prepared to work with countries that are reducing their imports on a case-by-case basis."
