President Donald Trump says Iran would be in ‘great danger’ if talks—due to begin in Oman on Saturday—about its nuclear program were unsuccessful.
The United States has imposed new sanctions targeting Iran’s so-called ghost fleet—which transports oil to countries like China—two days before the countries’ negotiators are due to meet to discuss a deal over Tehran’s nuclear program.
The State Department said, in a
statement, on Thursday, “Today, the United States is taking action under president Trump’s maximum pressure campaign on Iran to stem the flow of revenue that the regime uses to support its malign activities abroad and oppress its own people.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States will hold direct talks with Iran over its nuclear program in Oman, on Saturday, and President Donald Trump said earlier this week
Iran would be in “great danger” if the negotiations were unsuccessful.
On Thursday the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)
said it was imposing sanctions on Jugwinder Singh Brar, a 63-year-old Indian national based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), who owns almost 30 vessels through a string of shipping companies, many of which OFAC said were “part of Iran’s ’shadow fleet.'”
The Treasury Department said in a“Brar’s vessels engage in high-risk ship-to-ship transfers of Iranian petroleum in waters off Iraq, Iran, the UAE, and the Gulf of Oman.”
The Treasury Department said it was also imposing sanctions on two companies based in UAE and two Indian firms who allegedly own and operate ships, “that have transported Iranian oil on behalf of the National Iranian Oil Company and the Iranian military.”
‘Network of Unscrupulous Shippers’
Sanctions are also being imposed on a Chinese company, Guangsha Zhoushan Energy Group Co. Ltd, which operates an oil terminal at Huangzeshan Island in Zhoushan, near Shanghai.The State Department said the terminal has a “demonstrated pattern of violating U.S. sanctions on Iran.”
In their statement, they said, “This terminal has acquired Iranian crude-oil at least nine times between 2021 and 2025, including from U.S.-sanctioned vessels, amounting to the import of at least 13 million barrels of Iranian crude oil.”
The State Department said in February 2025 Guangsha Zhoushan knowingly accepted one million barrels of Iranian crude oil from the
Aventus I, a Panama-flagged tanker also known as the Fury, which was sanctioned by OFAC in Oct. 2024.
The State Department added that the terminal was connected through an undersea pipeline to a so-called teapot refinery.
Teapot refineries are small, independent oil refineries which often buy and process Iranian oil.
Teapot Refinery Sanctioned
Last month the United States sanctioned a
teapot refinery, the Huaying Huizhou Daya Bay Petrochemical Terminal Storage, for the first time.
In February, Trump said he was re-imposing a campaign of “maximum pressure” against Iran, to prevent it from generating the money needed to fund its nuclear weapons program.
The Tehran regime has always denied it is trying to produce
nuclear weapons, but in November 2024, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) condemned Iran for the second time in five months for failing to cooperate fully with the agency’s inspectors monitoring its nuclear program.
In a
report published on Nov. 19, 2024, the IAEA stated the Iranian regime had amassed a stockpile of enriched uranium that was more than 32 times the limit set by the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal.
Trump withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA in 2018, calling it the “worst deal ever.”
The Biden administration held indirect negotiations with Iran in Vienna in 2021 about restoring the JCPOA but failed to reach an agreement.
Trump has been adamant Iran will not get nuclear weapons and last month
he said, “If they [the Iranians] don’t make a deal, there will be bombing.”
Trump told NBC News in a March 30 telephone interview: “It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before. There’s a chance that if they don’t make a deal, that I will do secondary tariffs on them like I did four years ago.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, writing on
social media platform X on Tuesday, said: “Iran and the United States will meet in Oman on Saturday for indirect high-level talks. It is as much an opportunity as it is a test. The ball is in America’s court.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
