WASHINGTON/CARACAS (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump’s pick of U.S. Senator Marco Rubio for secretary of state could signal stricter enforcement of oil sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, but concerns about retaliation by China could temper any efforts, analysts said yesterday.
Rubio, a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has long pushed for a tougher U.S. policy on Iran and China. Rubio, whose parents immigrated from Cuba to the U.S., is also a critic of Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolas Maduro, whose two re-elections have been disputed by Washington, leading to oil sanctions on the OPEC nation.
Iran’s oil production has been the target of successive waves of sanctions, and during Trump’s first term, oil exports from the third-largest producer in OPEC slowed to a trickle.
They have risen during President Joe Biden’s tenure as analysts say sanctions have been less rigorously enforced, Iran has succeeded in evading them, and as China has become a major buyer, according to industry trackers.
