US Grants Temporary Waiver for Iranian Oil Shipments, Citing 'Emergency'
The Trump administration granted a 30-day waiver in October 2018, allowing Iranian crude oil to be transported by sea despite re-imposed sanctions. This decision, reported by Newsweek, followed the withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) earlier the same year. The waiver was framed as a necessary measure for a specific 'emergency' related to the oil market, permitting crude
cargoes that had already left Iranian ports before the sanctions snapped back into full effect. Mainstream outlets like Newsweek largely framed this as a one-off exception, attributing it to market stability concerns without questioning the underlying strategy. This framing omits the consistent pattern of US policy towards Iran, which frequently employs 'maximum pressure' rhetoric while
simultaneously making strategic, often opaque, concessions or temporary easements. Such actions are rarely about humanitarian concern or market stability alone, but frequently serve to manage international alliances or to create leverage for future negotiations. For example, the US provided intelligence to Iraq during its war with Iran from 1980 to 1988, even as Iraq used chemical weapons, a fact
often minimized when discussing later US claims about WMDs in the region. This temporary waiver for Iranian oil shipments occurred 39 years after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, a period marked by perpetual US sanctions and interventions. The lifting of even a short-term sanction, regardless of its stated reason, highlights the paradoxical nature of US foreign policy, which simultaneously seeks to