Iraq faces worsening power shortages after the US cuts waivers tied to Iranian gas and electricity imports.
The United States has ended a sanctions waiver that allowed Iraq to buy electricity from neighbouring Iran, in line with US President Donald Trump’s policy of exerting “maximum pressure” on Tehran.
In a statement released on Sunday, the US Department of State said the decision not to renew the waiver was made to “ensure we do not allow Iran any degree of economic or financial relief.”
Such a waiver was introduced in 2018, when Washington reimposed sanctions on Tehran after Trump abandoned a nuclear deal with Iran negotiated under US President Barack Obama. Back then, Trump imposed sweeping US sanctions on any other country buying Iran’s oil. The waiver was extended to Iraq as a “key partner” of the US.
Since returning to the White House for a second term as US president in January, Trump has reinstated his policy of exerting “maximum pressure” against Iran.
“The president’s maximum pressure campaign is designed to end Iran’s nuclear threat, curtail its ballistic missile programme, and stop it from supporting terrorist groups,” a spokesman for the US embassy in Baghdad said earlier on Sunday. The spokesman urged Baghdad “to eliminate its dependence on Iranian sources of energy as soon as possible”.
That won’t be an easy task. Despite its oil and gas wealth, Iraq has suffered from decades of electricity shortages because of war, corruption and mismanagement and has become heavily reliant on imported Iranian gas as well as electricity imported directly from Iran to meet its electricity needs.
Three Iraqi energy officials who spoke to Reuters said the country has no immediate alternatives to compensate for the energy imported from Iran, which will cause a significant problem in providing enough electricity to meet domestic consumption. Many Iraqis have to rely on diesel generators or suffer through temperatures that exceed 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) during the summer months.
The waiver that expired applied to direct electricity imports. It remains unclear whether Iraq will be able to continue to import gas from Iran for its power plants.
The US embassy asserted that electricity imports from Iran were only four percent of electricity consumption in Iraq.
But a spokesperson for Iraq’s Ministry of Electricity, Ahmad Moussa, said that should gas imports also be forbidden, it “would cause Iraq to lose more than 30 percent of its electricity energy”, so the government is looking for alternatives.
Already, Moussa said, Iranian gas had stopped supplying power plants in Baghdad and the central Euphrates region for the past two months, and the supply to southern power plants had been unstable.
A senior official in the electricity ministry told The Associated Press that the ministry had not yet been officially notified of the US decision regarding gas imports.
A ‘bully’
The US administration’s decision to remove the waiver comes two days after Trump said he had written a letter to Iran’s leadership seeking to initiate talks on a nuclear deal. The US president warned of possible military action if Iran did not give in.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei snapped back, saying the country would not negotiate with a “bully” interested in imposing conditions rather than starting negotiations.
Still, the Iranian mission to the United Nations on Sunday suggested Tehran might be willing to discuss certain issues – but not the complete end of its nuclear programme.
“If the objective of negotiations is to address concerns vis-a-vis any potential militarization of Iran’s nuclear program, such discussions may be subject to consideration,” said a statement from the mission.
“However, should the aim be the dismantlement of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program to claim that what Obama failed to achieve has now been accomplished, such negotiations will never take place.”
The landmark 2015 nuclear deal that Obama helped negotiate between Tehran and major powers promised sanctions relief in return for Iran curbing its nuclear programme.
Tehran, which denies seeking nuclear weapons, initially adhered to the nuclear deal after Trump pulled out of it, but then rolled back commitments. US officials estimate Iran would now need mere weeks to build a nuclear bomb if it chose to.