January 22-2016
Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif (photo) has complained that the West is doing nothing to stop oil sales by the Islamic State. “When Iran was under sanctions and if it sold one barrel of oil beyond the limit set for it, it was considered a red line and buyers and banks that provided transaction facilities were fined. Now, one can ask if such measures were applicable in the case of Iran, how come they cannot be employed to control the areas under Daesh control.” In other words, he was accusing the West of allowing oil sales by the Islamic State to go unchallenged. But Zarif ignored several facts: 1) contrary to what Zarif said, no buyer of Iranian oil was ever fined or sanctioned by the United States; 2) the Western states have been bombing Islamic State oil sites, something they never did to Iran; 3) the IS oil sales are conducted outside the international banking system, so sanctions wouldn’t work; and 4) the biggest buyer of IS oil, according to the US Treasury Department, is the Syrian government, where the West has no influence, but Iran has a great deal.
