Abstract

Since 2006, Iran has been subject to a range of international sanctions, both collectively through the
United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU), and individually by States such as the United
States. These sanctions, of an increasingly stringent nature, seek to ensure the peaceful development
of Iran‟s nuclear energy program. To this end, the sanctions now cover a wide range of activities,
including the export to Iran of materials and technologies that could advance Iran‟s nuclear weapons
program, restrictions on arms trading, limits on foreign trade with certain named persons, restrictions
on the provision of financial services, asset-freezing measures, controls on shipping and air transport,
and, most recently, controls on certain dealings with Iran‟s oil and gas sectors.
This short note reviews the key provisions of the sanctions as adopted at the UN and EU
levels. It focuses on the specific measures taken as they relate to maritime matters. Two issues are
especially important in this respect. First, since the international sanctions require States to control a
range of private transactions, such as shipping services, the effective operation of UN sanctions
depends upon States being able to transpose general sanctions into measures which can create
sufficiently certain levels of legal conduct for individuals. It is not clear that this is easily done in
practice. Second, it is clear that successful sanctions require considerable constraints on international
shipping, because this is the principal means by which goods enter and leave Iran. This raises
questions about the extent to which aspects of the sanctions can be reconciled with the law of the sea,
particularly as regards inspections and limits on shipping transactions.