White House on Iranian Oil Sales Hitting Five-Year High: ‘There Is Enforcement of the Sanctions’

During an interview with Bloomberg on Monday, White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby responded to a question on Iran continuing to sell oil to China and their output hitting five-year highs by stating that sanctions against Iran are being enforced, but new ones aren’t off the table.

Kirby said, “We have been enforcing sanctions. My goodness, in the three-and-a-half years of this administration, we have implemented more than 50 sanction regimes targeting more than 500 entities and individuals. And again, I won’t preview coming sanctions or anything like that, but I can tell you that additional sanctions are certainly not off the table in terms of holding Iran accountable. And take a look at the additional military resources that President Biden has added to the region, even before October 7. This is something that he’s been keenly focused on. And, as we saw from Saturday night, Iran is increasingly isolated on the world stage, they are increasingly making it harder for anybody in the international community to be sympathetic to any of their inimical interests there. So, again, I think we’ve done a lot. We’ll continue to look at our options going forward. And I suspect that we’ll continue to hold Iran properly accountable.”

Co-host Annmarie Hordern then asked, “Admiral Kirby, how are they isolated? They had a call with the Saudis, they’re sending all their oil to China, they’re sending…drones to Russia, in March, Iranian oil output hit a five-year high. Where is the enforcement?”

Kirby responded, “There is enforcement of the sanctions, Annmarie. Again, this is one of the most heavily-sanctioned countries in the world. And we’re going to continue to look at our options going forward to hold them properly accountable. Sanctions are certainly not off the table, neither is going — making sure that we’ve got the capabilities in the region, and we do, to thwart some of their destabilizing activity. You talked about the uranium enrichment. When the previous administration pulled out of the Iran deal, it vastly accelerated the degree to which Iran could start to spin up their centrifuges and get closer to some sort of breakout capability. The president, obviously, tried, we tried, but Iran was not negotiating in good faith to get back into that Iran deal. But he also made it clear that we will not allow Iran to achieve a nuclear weapons capability. We prefer to do that through diplomacy, but if not, we’ve got other options available to us.”

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