US officials are meeting with oil industry experts as their concerns over Iran’s increasing influence in Southeast Asia continue to grow, Bloomberg reported on 7 May.
Brian Nelson, the US Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, sought to boost US efforts to tighten restrictions on Iran’s crude exports during a four-day trip to speak with oil executives, regulators, and financial institutions in Singapore and Malaysia.
Nelson’s trip comes as the Treasury’s increasing efforts to crack down on the financing of resistance groups like Hamas, which it claims are routed through Southeast Asia and include fundraising efforts and Iranian oil sales.
Nelson told reporters that the US was attempting to prevent Malaysia from becoming a regional power where Palestinian resistance groups could raise funds.
The US Treasury’s undersecretary also made efforts to snuff out Russia’s ability to generate capital for its war with Ukraine during his trip.
The US official expressed concern that Russia has continued to source critical components in Southeast Asia, which he did not specify, and has been using transfers to hide their ultimate destination.
However, the official noted that Iran has been the main focus given its historic ties with nations like Malaysia. The US put in place a package of measures in April targeting Tehran’s oil sector following Iran’s support of the Palestinian resistance and their retaliatory strike on Israel.
The packages’ coverage includes foreign ports, vessels, and refineries known to process or ship Iranian crude. Restrictions also cover all transactions with sanctions-ridden Iranian banks used to procure petroleum and other oil-based products.
The US official noted that increasing the enforcement efforts of these sanctions on Iran has proven difficult as frequent transfers of Iranian oil between tankers in the waters around Malaysia cover the destination of ships heading further east.
A statement released on 3 May by the US Treasury states that “Since the beginning of this year, Treasury has taken several significant actions to combat and disrupt the illicit shipment of Iranian oil to buyers in East Asia, including shipments via ship-to-ship transfers in international waters near Singapore and Malaysia.”
Tehran’s oil sector has been on a fiery increase, exceeding $35 billion over the past 12 months and hitting a five-year high last year of roughly 50 percent, 1.29 million barrels per day, with most shipments going to China.
Iran has been showing how futile sanctions against it have become, inking recent deals with Pakistan and Sri Lanka in April.
Tehran and Islamabad have agreed to boost bilateral trade, with an initial phase of $10 billion, and are seeking to increase efforts to tighten ties across other fields.
With Sri Lanka, Iran announced the Uma Oya hydropower and irrigation project. During its inauguration, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said the project proves the west does not have a monopoly on technology.
