US rejects call for Iran sanctions waiver

Washington will not budge on its decision to impose fresh sanctions on corporations operating in Iran, despite a European request for exemption, a media report said on Monday.

“International companies active in Iran face the threat of US sanctions within weeks after Washington rebuffed a high-level European plea to exempt crucial industries to help keep a landmark nuclear deal with Tehran alive,” Financial Times reported.

France, Britain, Germany and the EU had on June 6 sent Donald Trump’s administration a joint official request for their companies to be exempt from the fresh US sanctions on Iran.

The plea had come as European leaders scrambled to save the hard-fought deal signed between Iran and world powers in 2015 under which Tehran agreed to limit its nuclear capacities in exchange for relief from crippling economic sanctions.

Trump announced he was abandoning the deal in May -paving the way for new sanctions on Iran and punitive measures for those who trade with it.

In a formal letter, US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin refused to grant the European powers the waiver they had asked for, the Financial Times reported, citing diplomats.

French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire had already said the US would not grant Europe its request. “I wrote in the springtime to Steve Mnuchin ... to ask him for an exemption for European companies legally working in Iran,” Le Maire said according to an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro. AFP

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