U.S. Allows Eight Jurisdictions to Keep Buying Iran Oil for Now

The United States said on Friday it will temporarily spare eight jurisdictions from U.S. Iran-related sanctions, allowing them to keep importing Iranian oil after U.S. economic penalties come back into effect on Monday.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who announced the decision in a conference call, did not name the jurisdictions, but he said that the European Union as a whole, which has 28 members, would not receive one.

Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin also said the United States had made clear to the Brussels-based SWIFT financial messaging service that it was expected to disconnect all Iranian financial institutions that the United States plans to blacklist as of Monday. He declined to name the targeted institutions.

The restoration of sanctions is part of a wider effort by U.S. President Donald Trump to force Iran to curb its nuclear and missile programs as well as its support for proxy forces in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East. 

(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed, Patricia Zengerle and Lesley Wroughton Additional reporting by Henning Gloystein in SINGAPORE, Aizhu Chen in BEIJING and Dmitry Zhdannikov in London; Hyonhee Shin in SEOUL, Osamu Tsukimori in TOKYO, Gulsen Solaker in ANKARA)