TL;DR
OFAC's April 17 renewal of General License 134B runs to May 16, Day 25 of the waiver architecture the administration has chosen to exclude Iran from and include Russia within.
MSM Perspective
Fortune India and the defense trades covered the extension procedurally; neither named the Iran-carve-out as the architecture hardening.
X Perspective
X reads the Iran-excluded, Russia-included license as the single cleanest map of whose war the administration is willing to underwrite at the oil desk.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control on April 17 replaced General License 134A with General License 134B, extending the Russian-oil-already-at-sea sanctions waiver by one month to 12:01 a.m. EDT on May 16. [1] Tuesday is Day 25 of the new window. The paper's Monday marker opened the clock at Day 4; by Tuesday press time the waiver has held four days past the weekend with no amendment.
The architecture is explicit. The license "does not authorize any transaction involving a person, entity or joint venture located in Iran, North Korea, Cuba, or parts of Ukraine." [2] Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev has repeatedly placed the affected volume at roughly 100 million barrels of crude stranded on tankers worldwide — a figure that survived the March 12 original, the March 19 amendment to 134A, and now the April 17 rollover to 134B. [2] Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the prior Wednesday that Washington would not renew the waiver for Russian oil; the April 17 license renewed it. [1]
The waiver is the administration's clearest oil-desk frame: Iran sits outside the envelope, Russia sits inside. Day 25 is the architecture hardening by the clock. Twenty-five days in, no carve-out has been amended in Iran's direction, and the Russian oil the waiver covers has moved through the window without Brussels or London following the US model. Day 55 is May 16; the next decision is whether a 134C arrives or the waiver lapses.
-- KATYA VOLKOV, Moscow
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