Remarks by Assistant Secretary Philip Crowley on Oil Sanctions and Iran (Excerpts)

March 10, 2010

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QUESTION: The Royal Dutch Shell says that it's going to stop selling gasoline to Iran. Do you have any comment on that? And also the problem that, even as they stop, other companies are continuing and re-starting and you have some of the Asian companies, specifically Malaysian, continuing to sell gasoline.

MR. CROWLEY: Well, this is an important issue. We've had a wide range of conversations with our counterparts within the P-5+1 process as we've discussed ideas for putting additional pressure on Iran. We've centered on various industries and tried to call to the attention of companies in the energy sector, in the financial sector, others that if they choose to do business with Iran, it can have commercial implications. And we're continuing to move forward with prospective sanctions, and I would expect you'll see this advance over the next several weeks. But certainly, we are looking for countries and companies to be supportive as we try to find the right formula to put economic and political pressure on Iran to change its course.

QUESTION: Is there a sense of frustration, though, because that shows that there is weakness in the system when some people respect it and then they're aced out by other countries? I mean --

MR. CROWLEY: Well, again, as we - I mean, we are continuing our efforts on a couple of fronts. One is, obviously, there are existing international and national sanctions that apply to Iran, and we continue to find ways to enforce what exists. We are looking at a new round of sanctions and talking to countries about how to best do this.

I would - as we have said before, if you look at - once you have a kind of understanding, a consensus, and a strong statement that we'd like to see in the Security Council, as we've seen with North Korea, that there has been concerted international action. And we would expect coming out of the UN Security Council, once we get to that point, that we would look for companies to step up, countries to step up, and discourage the kind of economic activity you mentioned.

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