The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has pulled out of a $5 billion project to develop the South Pars gas field in Iran. According to CNPC officials, it has become increasingly difficult to handle payments because China's Bank of Kunlun, the primary vehicle for Iranian-Chinese business, no longer accepts trades with Iran. French petroleum company Total SA pulled out of the project last year in the wake of renewed U.S. sanctions. Iranian oil minister Bijan Zangeneh announced that Iran's Petropars Co. would take over full development of the gas field.

More than 20 ships carrying approximately one million tons of grain have been stuck for over a month outside Iran's Bandar Imam Khomeini and Bandar Abbas ports because of sanctions-related payment issues. The ships are carrying soybeans and corn, primarily from South America, and face costs of up to $15,000 per day. While there are no sanctions on humanitarian supplies such as food, businesses are often waiting months to receive payment because many Western banks are reluctant to have any business dealings with Iran. Affected companies include U.S. agribusiness Bunge, China's COFCO International, and several smaller Turkish and Iranian businesses.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) revealed that Iran is now enriching uranium with advanced centrifuges in violation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). An IAEA report verified that two R&D lines at Iran's Natanz facility, each of which contains up to 20 centrifuges, "were accumulating, or had been prepared to accumulate, enriched uranium." The Agency also reported that Iran is in the process of installing 164-machine cascades of IR-4 and IR-2m models, both of which were removed under the JCPOA. Iran informed the IAEA in a letter on September 25 of the additions, which also include a 165-machine cascade of IR-6 centrifuges. Under the terms of the JCPOA, Iran can only use first-generation IR-1 centrifuges at Natanz, with a small number of more advanced models allowed for research purposes.

A new intelligence report from the German state of Hesse found that Iran engaged in proliferation efforts connected with weapons of mass destruction in 2018. The report states that Iran "attempted to acquire and redistribute such weapons in the context of proliferation," as did North Korea, Pakistan, and Syria. It details the use of foreign academics in fields such as electrical engineering and chemical-biological processes in support of proliferation. The report also highlights Iran and China's use of cyber activities to facilitate "scientific goals." The conclusions are similar to those in reports released earlier in 2019 from the German states of Bavaria and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.