But little attention has been paid to the non-importers and whether they might start buying Iranian oil. Now Uruguay may just turn to Iran’s oil.
Trend News Agency reports that Uruguay has suggested to Iran a barter deal, paying for Iranian oil with Uruguayan rice.
No volumes of rice or oil were mentioned. Uruguay is one of the smallest countries in Latin America with just 3.4 million people, so it could not be a major buyer and certainly would not make up for any of the markets already lost to Iran.
However, if Uruguay works out a deal and avoids the American hammer, it might just encourage some of the other 167 nations that do not buy Iranian oil to start looking at barter deals.
Iran has said nothing about the Uruguayan proposal. However, it has spoken publicly of its openness to barter deals. With barter, no funds change hands and hence the American banking restrictions that make it so difficult to carry out financial transactions with Iran would not come into play.
Furthermore, the United States opposes sanctions on food and medical items and is selling large volumes of wheat to Iran right now, so it might find it hard to oppose a barter deal that involved rice for Iran.