Washington 0
20 November 2020

The State Department confirmed that the U.S. had “renewed the sanctions waiver for Iraq to engage in financial transactions related to the import of electricity from Iran” for 45 days. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo subsequently explained that “we’ve made clear there were higher expectations for progress with Iraqis, in this case, mostly energy from a dollar perspective… where we said, ‘OK, we’ll give you this waiver, but you must invest, you must begin to create systems and processes so that you will become more free, more independent from Iranian energy’”. “We’ve made real progress there over the last 20-21 months, there’s obviously more work to do… We will, again, evaluate whether Iraq has made sufficient progress, and we’ll try to get the balance just right then as well”, Pompeo added.

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