U.S. sanctions on Iran threaten access by some Iranians to medicines that treat some diseases such as cancer and epilepsy despite exemptions in the measures for imports of humanitarian goods, a report said on Tuesday.



“There’s no acute nationwide shortage of medicine in Iran at this point,” Tara Sepehri Far, a researcher at Human Rights Watch and an author of the report, said at the Atlantic Council, a think tank in Washington. “But people who are suffering from rare and special diseases are already seeing the negative effect of sanctions.”



If the situation does not change “we expect the harm to be even greater,” Far said.



Iran’s&nbsp;MAHAK&nbsp;Pediatric Cancer Treatment &amp; Research Center, lacked three key chemotherapy drugs – pegaspargase, mercaptopurine, and vinblastine – in May, the report said.



Hundreds of people who have epidermolysis bullosa, or EB, a type of disease that causes fragile, blistering skin, have difficulty accessing medicine after the sanctions were imposed, it said.



Food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are exempt from sanctions Washington reimposed last year after President Donald Trump walked away from a 2015 international deal over Iran’s nuclear program.



But the U.S. measures targeting everything from oil sales to shipping and financial activities have deterred several foreign banks from doing business with Iran, including humanitarian deals. Imports of grain have been slowed as well.



As oil exports fall, it could result in higher inflation and affect the affordability of medicine, the report said.



The U.S. Treasury and State departments did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the report.



But a senior administration official told Reuters this month that any drug shortages represent the Iranian government’s prioritization of its missile program and other initiatives. The official conceded that slowdowns in some drug imports were possible, but put the onus on Tehran, which the official said must address corruption in the medicine trade. “To blame us for that is a little more than just disingenuous,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.



Last week the Treasury Department and the State Department said the Trump administration formed a new humanitarian mechanism to ensure “unprecedented transparency” into food and medical trade with Iran.



The mechanism requires foreign governments and banks to provide Treasury an unprecedented amount of information on a monthly basis to ensure no funds are diverted by Tehran “to develop ballistic missiles, support terrorism, or finance other malign activities,” the administration said.



The move sparked a debate on whether humanitarian trade would be eased or gummed up as it requires banks to reveal large amounts of information.



Adam Smith, a lawyer who worked on sanctions under then-President Barack Obama, said the new mechanism could enhance humanitarian trade if the banks find that the markets are big enough to go through the trouble.



“I actually don’t think this could make things worse,” Smith said at the Atlantic Council. “But … there’s still more that needs to be released about how this will work and what the risks are if you get it wrong.”

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U.S. sanctions on Iran threaten access to certain medicines -report

The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions against Venezuela’s military counterintelligence agency following the death in custody of a navy captain amid allegations of torture.
The U.S. Treasury said on its website that it had sanctioned the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence but gave no further details.
President Nicolas Maduro’s government confirmed the death on June 29 of Rafael Acosta, who was arrested eight days earlier for alleged participation in a coup plot. Human rights organizations and political leaders have accused Maduro’s government of torturing Acosta to death and refusing the clarify the circumstances.

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U.S. sanctions Venezuela counterintelligence agency after death of navy captain

Indian companies supplying U.S.-made technology components to Chinese telecom firm Huawei Technologies may face penalties under U.S. regulations, the Economic Times reported, Reuters reports.
The government has not yet taken a call on whether to ban the Chinese telecom equipment maker, said telecoms and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in Parliament on Wednesday, the paper reported.
Huawei, which is also the global leader in telecoms networking equipment, is embroiled in a long-running row with the United States over the security of its systems and devices.

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Indian firms supplying U.S. tech to Huawei may face U.S. sanctions – ET

The United States targeted Iran’s petrochemical industry in new sanctions imposed on Friday, including the country’s largest petrochemical holding group over its financial support for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Treasury Department said, Reuters reports.
The new sanctions come as Washington keeps up pressure against Iran over its ballistic missile programme and for waging proxy wars in other Middle Eastern countries.
The sanctions target Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company (PGPIC) for providing financial support the economic arm of the IRGC, Iran’s elite military unit in charge of Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs.
Treasury also designated the holding group’s network of 39 subsidiary petrochemical companies and foreign-based sales agents. PGPIC and its subsidiaries hold 40% of Iran’s petrochemical production capacity and are responsible for 50% of Iran’s total petrochemical exports, it said.
“By targeting this network we intend to deny funding to key elements of Iran’s petrochemical sector that provide support to the IRGC,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.
The Treasury statement said Iran’s oil ministry last year awarded the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya, the IRGC’s economic and engineering arm, 10 projects in oil and petrochemical industries worth $22 billion, four times the official budget of the IRGC.
The United States in April officially designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organisation. U.S. law already punished U.S. persons who deal with the IRGC with up to 20 years in prison because of the group’s designation under the Specially Designated Global Terrorist list, a different sanctions programme.

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New U.S. sanctions target Iran’s petrochemical industry

President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered new sanctions on Iran, this time targeting the Islamic Republic&#8217;s export revenues from its industrial metals sector, and vowed to keep squeezing Tehran unless it &#8220;fundamentally alters&#8221; its policies.
The announcement was made on the anniversary of Trump&#8217;s unilateral withdrawal of the United States from a 2015 landmark deal between Tehran and world powers to curb its nuclear programme in exchange for easing some sanctions and hours after Tehran said it would no longer fully comply with the accord.
Tensions were already high between Washington and Tehran when the Trump administration said last weekend that it was deploying a carrier strike group and bombers to the Middle East, in response to what it said were &#8220;troubling indications and warnings&#8221; from Iran.
Before Trump&#8217;s executive order for the sanctions, a senior White House official said Washington would impose more economic curbs on Tehran &#8216;very soon&#8217; and had warned Europe to stop doing business with the Islamic Republic.
&#8220;Today&#8217;s action targets Iran&#8217;s revenue from the export of industrial metals &#8211; 10 percent of its export economy &#8211; and puts other nations on notice that allowing Iranian steel and other metals into your ports will no longer be tolerated,&#8221; Trump said in a statement.
&#8220;Tehran can expect further actions unless it fundamentally alters its conduct,&#8221; Trump said.
The Trump administration says the nuclear deal, negotiated by his predecessor Barack Obama, was flawed as it is not permanent, does not address Iran&#8217;s ballistic missile programme and does not punish it for waging proxy wars in other Middle East countries.
Leading Democratic lawmakers such as Chris Murphy, the top Democrat on the Senate&#8217;s Middle East subcommittee, said Iran&#8217;s halting compliance to some parts of the deal was &#8220;disastrous news&#8221; and accused Republican Trump&#8217;s administration of making America much less safe through its policies. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi requested a briefing on Iran for members.
Hours before the fresh U.S. sanctions, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced Tehran was reducing curbs to its nuclear programme with steps that for now stopped short of violating the 2015 accord. But it threatened more action if countries did not shield it from sanctions.
Tehran halting compliance with some elements of the nuclear deal was &#8220;nothing less than nuclear blackmail of Europe,&#8221; Tim Morrison, special assistant to the U.S. president and senior director for weapons of mass destruction, told a conference.
&#8220;Now is the time for the community of nations to strongly condemn Iran’s nuclear misconduct and increase pressure on the regime to comply with U.S. demands,&#8221; Morrison said, adding that Washington was not &#8216;done&#8217; with sanctions on Iran.
Morrison said the United States would move quickly against any attempt by European countries to undermine Washington&#8217;s sanctions pressure on Iran. He advised them against using the so-called Special Purpose Vehicle to facilitate non-dollar trade to circumvent U.S. sanctions.
&#8220;If you are a bank, an investor, an insurer or other business in Europe you should know that getting involved in the &#8230; Special Purpose Vehicle is a very poor business decision,&#8221; Morrison said.
Spearheaded by national security adviser John Bolton, the Trump administration has taken several unprecedented steps to squeeze Iran such as demanding the world halt all Iranian oil imports and designating Iran&#8217;s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organisation, which Iran has cast as an American provocation.
&#8220;We have made our focus diplomatic isolation and economic pressure and that policy is working,&#8221; Brian Hook, Special Envoy for Iran, said in a briefing. Hook said that more nations now, compared with a year ago, were in agreement with the United States on Iran.
Washington&#8217;s European allies opposed Trump&#8217;s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal and have failed so far to find ways to blunt the economic impact of new U.S. sanctions.