S. Korea leaving US oil embargos on Iran

South Korea will try to persuade Washington to allow it to continue to import crude oil from Iran, excluding it from the new sanctions imposed on the Middle Eastern country, a government official said Friday.Seoul officials said their country is in dire need of Iranian oil, stressing that reducing or stopping crude supplies from Tehran would wreak havoc on South Korea. The US Senate passed a defense bill Thursday that also imposes sanctions on Iran's central bank. The measure calls for banning foreign financial institutions dealing with the Iranian bank from transactions with American financial institutions. The US, UK, and Canada announced new sanctions on the financial and energy sections of Iran on November 21, after Israel and the United States dictated a report to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Chief Yukiya Amano on Iran to find a pretext for intensifying war rhetoric on the Islamic Republic. Once the report was released, not only Iran, but also many world countries, including Russia, China and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) member states, strongly rejected it and blasted the UN nuclear watchdog chief for acting as a White House proxy. Iran also said that it would not budge "an iota" from its peaceful atomic activities.