U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that the U.S. intends to hit Iran with new sanctions in coming days over its unprecedented attack on Israel, and these actions could seek to reduce Iran's capacity to export oil.
"With respect to sanctions, I fully expect that we will take additional sanctions action against Iran in the coming days," Yellen said told a news conference on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings in Washington.
"We don't preview our sanctions tools. But in discussions I've had, all options to disrupt terrorist financing of Iran continue to be on the table," Yellen added.
She said that the Treasury and State Department have taken previous action to contain Iran's "destabilizing" behavior by diminishing its ability to export oil.
"Clearly, Iran is continuing to export some oil. There may be more that we could do. I don't want to preview our actual sanctions activities, but certainly that remains in focus as a possible area that we could address."
Treasury was working to enlist the aid of China, G7 partners and other major global suppliers to erode Iran's ability to continue to export oil and to get the microelectronics needed for the drones it used to attack Israel and was selling to Russia, a senior Treasury official told reporters.
The official said a jump in oil prices had been driven mainly by geopolitical uncertainty, not U.S. sanctions, and noted that past sanctions had not led to oil price increases.
