Delivery of gas and electricity from Iran to Iraq has been halted.
The Iraqi Ministry of Electricity states that the Islamic Republic has stopped delivering gas and electricity to the country due to cold weather.
This statement, published on the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity’s website, adds that the cutoff of gas exports from Iran to this country has led to four thousand megawatts of power plant capacity in Iraq being unused.
Iran exports electricity and gas to Iraq, but in the summer, due to severe electricity shortages, it is unable to export to Iraq, and in the winter, due to gas shortages, it stops gas exports to Iraq and faces severe restrictions on delivering gas to its domestic power plants, reducing the country’s electricity production.
Iraq uses imported gas from Iran to fuel its power plants.
Iranian authorities have claimed in recent years that the reason for the halt in electricity and gas exports to Iraq in some months is Iraq’s accumulated debt to Iran due to US sanctions. However, the United States this summer issued a license to allow the use of blocked assets to export Iranian electricity and gas to Iraq for importing non-sanctioned goods from a third country.