said<\/a> on Tuesday that most NATO allies had turned down his request to help secure the strait.<\/p>\nAlso in an effort to tamp down prices, the Trump administration announced last week that it had temporarily lifted sanctions on Iranian crude oil currently stranded at sea.<\/p>\n
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote on X on Friday that sanctioned Iranian oil \u201cis being hoarded by China on the cheap. By temporarily unlocking this existing supply for the world, the United States will quickly bring approximately 140 million barrels of oil to global markets, expanding the amount of worldwide energy and helping to relieve the temporary pressures on supply caused by Iran. In essence, we will be using the Iranian barrels against Tehran to keep the price down as we continue Operation Epic Fury.\u201d<\/p>\n
The short-term authorization is strictly limited to oil already in transit and does not allow new purchases or production. According to the Treasury Department, the permit applies to oil loaded onto ships by 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday, and will remain in effect until April 19.<\/p>\n
\u201cFurther, Iran will have difficulty accessing any revenue generated and the United States will continue to maintain maximum pressure on Iran and its ability to access the international financial system,\u201d Bessent continued. \u201cAny short-term disruption now will ultimately translate into longer-term economic gains for Americans\u2014because there is no prosperity without security.\u201d<\/p>\n
The New York Times reported on Friday that Tehran has allowed some friendly countries, including China, India, Pakistan, Malaysia and Iraq, free passage through the Strait.<\/p>\n
Iranian legislators are mulling a transit fee for any ship crossing the narrow sea passage, the Times reported, citing Iranian media.<\/p>\n
Since the start of the war on Feb. 28, crossings through the Strait have plummeted from 130 vessels per day to three or four daily.<\/p>\n
Some 2,000 ships and 20,000 seafarers are currently trapped in the area, the Times said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday issued a clear threat to destroy Iran\u2019s energy infrastructure if it didn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-538752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}