Did US impose sanctions on Malaysia as State Sponsor of Terror?!

Reuters , 10th May- U.S has imposed sanctions on four Malaysian based companies, making it the first country in SEA to be listed as a state sponsor of terror, this comes after officials from the U.S State Department arrived in Malaysia over the week and held discussions with Malaysian officials including Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

According to sources who spoke under the condition of anonymity, the conversation between U.S officials and Malaysian officials were bitter and short as U.S attempts to curb Iran and its proxies of financing in the region.

According to the source who familiar with discussions, U.S officials have said to request Malaysian officials to tone down their support for Hamas and Gaza both publicly and privately and impose anti-terrorism measures.

In recent days the State Department has accused Malaysia of helping Iran to sell its sanctioned oil via ship-to-ship transfers in Malaysian waters and using sanctions busting methods to obscure the origin of Iranian oil.

According to sanctions official Nelson McBride “ We have seen in recent months on how Malaysia is playing a vital role in terrorist financing with Iran, Russia and Hamas. This include allowing terrorist individuals to access Malaysian banking system for the purposes of money laundering, allowing ship-to-ship transfers of oil in its waters and promoting terrorist groups like Hamas in the country.”

He further added that he found it strange on how Malaysia is able to export more oil than it produces, “ I find it quite strange that Malaysia which produces 300,000 barrels/month are able to export nearly 6,000,000 barrels/month to China and India. It far exceeds their production capacity.”

U.S State Department officials also commented that they will be monitoring closely the situation in Malaysia in the coming months and have said the U.S will not hesitate to impose harsher economic crippling sanctions on Malaysia if needed to.😟

Any claims that Reuters reported that Malaysia is the first country in Southeast Asia to be listed by the United States as a state sponsor of terror are false. Reuters did not report this.

FAKE NEWS ALERT: The United States has not imposed any new sanctions on Malaysian companies nor listed Malaysia as a state sponsor of terror. The hoax below circulating on WhatsApp and other social media is fake news.

I have received a viral message claiming Malaysia is the first ASEAN country to be sanctioned by the United States.

Based on the denial of the Reuters Press Team on X, and the confirmation I received from the US Embassy, I confirmed that the viral message is false.

This is a powerful tool that we find is effective, in the context of most of this activity is designed to drive profit or provide capital for ongoing operations, and our sanctions have the ability to disrupt both of those features. So from that perspective, we think of course that it’s impactful.

I would only say we have seen and we’ve promulgated some sort of guidance to the (Malaysian) marine sector about the type of services that they are engaging in.

These are ship-to-ship transfers, particularly at night, which we see from time to time. They are really designed to obfuscate the origin of the commodity, in this case, Iranian oil.

I emphasised that we will only recognise sanctions if they are imposed by the United Nations Security Council. The delegation from the US respected our stance.

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