... success in this area raises questions. INSTEX has been widely advertised by EU politicians, but initial expectations were too high. The mechanism has not yet justified itself, even for humanitarian purposes. The Treasury Department can impose blocking sanctions against INSTEX at any time if it considers that the mechanism is being used to deliberately circumvent US restrictions against Iran. Switzerland’s SHTA mechanism, which is used for humanitarian deals with Iran, looks much better. It was created jointly with ...
... being designated on the SDN list, or leave Iran and incur losses, while retaining the possibility of working on the US market and operating within the USD financial system. The choice for major companies is obvious. Moreover, it is still early days for INSTEX, an alternative settlement system with Iran created by the EU, so it is unlikely to change anything for Iran in the near future.
However, there is also a flip side of the coin.
Alexey Khlebnikov:
Iran’s Oil Sector under Renewed Sanctions: Adopting to the New Reality
First, the withdrawal from the JCPOA undermined trust in US diplomacy. In particular, the Iranian case is extremely important for Moscow, showing that it would be undesirable to compromise with the US by making concessions ...
