Iranian Minister of Petroleum Bijan Namdar Zangeneh made a dire short-term prediction for the oil market shortly after the US launched its newest round of sanctions against Iran, one of the world's largest oil exporters.
"Unfortunately, the coming months are expected to be pretty hurtful for consumers," Zangeneh warned on Tuesday in an interview with Shana, the oil ministry's news agency.
On Monday, Washington re-introduced its sanctions on Iran's banking, shipping, and energy sectors, including crucial oil exports. The crippling moratoria are designed to bring the oil exports of the Islamic Republic to zero. Washington has granted temporary sanctions waivers to eight countries to import Iranian oil, including China, India, Japan, South Korea, Italy, Greece, Taiwan, and Turkey.
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According to Zangeneh, however, these measures will not help to fix the imbalance on the oil market. "The level of the waivers would not be able to meet the demand and, therefore, I must say the future months will unfortunately be hurtful months for oil consumers," he said.
He went on to claim that the Trump administration had artificially reduced oil fuel prices, but they will see a natural uptrend in the coming months.
Trump's new wave of unilateral sanctions added to those that have already been introduced; Washington announced in May that it would withdraw from the 2015 nuclear accord.
POTUS claimed that the agreement, which curbed Iran's nuclear program, was poorly negotiated, and announced the re-imposition of sanctions to push Iran towards a "better" deal which would also include a ban on ballistic missiles. Trump's move to back out of the deal was strongly supported by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Iranian President Rouhani has vowed that his country will keep selling oil despite what he called "illegal and unjust" sanctions levied by the US. "We are in a situation of economic war, confronting a bullying power. I don't think that in the history of America, someone has entered the White House who is so against law and international conventions," he added, referring to the architect behind the sanctions, US President Trump.
