BAGHDAD, March 24 (Reuters) – Iraq’s oil minister Hayan Abdel-Ghani has said Iranian oil tankers seized by U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf were using forged Iraqi documents.
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has restored “maximum pressure” on Iran, reviving a policy that seeks to isolate the country from the global economy and eliminate its oil export revenue in order to slow Tehran’s development of a nuclear weapon.
Abdel-Ghani was asked if he had received messages from the United States over the possibility that state oil marketer SOMO could be subject to sanctions itself over the violation of Iranian sanctions.
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“We received some verbal inquiries about oil tankers being detained in the Persian Gulf by U.S. naval forces carrying Iraqi shipping manifests,” the oil minister said on state television late on Sunday, adding there had been no formal written communication.
“It turned out that these tankers were Iranian … and were using forged Iraqi documents. We explained this to the relevant authorities with complete transparency and they also confirmed this.”
The Iranian oil ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Iran views neighbour and ally Iraq as vital for keeping its economy afloat while under sanctions. But Baghdad, a partner to both the Washington and Tehran, is wary of being caught in the crosshairs of Trump’s policy to squeeze Iran, sources have said.
Reuters reported in December that a sophisticated fuel oil smuggling network that some experts believe generates at least $1 billion a year for Iran and its proxies has flourished in Iraq in the past few years, including by using forged documentation.
SOMO sells crude exclusively to companies that own refineries and does not supply trading firms, Abdel-Ghani said, adding that several traders were behind the scheme.
“SOMO operates with full transparency and has committed no wrongdoing in the oil export process,” he said.
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(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Editing by Yousef Saba, Bernadette Baum, Kirsten Donovan)
