Volvo halts Iran truck operations over US sanctions

Carmaker Volvo has halted its truck assembly lines in Iran over US sanctions that are preventing it from being paid, a company spokesman said on Monday.

The sanctions were imposed on 6 August after US President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, leading a number of companies to reconsider their operations in Iran.

Volvo spokesman Fredrik Ivarsson said the company could not obtain payment for any of parts it shipped and had therefore decided not to operate in Iran.

"With all these sanctions and everything that the US put [in place]... the bank system doesn't work in Iran.We can't get paid [...] So for now we don't have any business," he told Reuters.

According to Reuters, a commercial department manager at Saipa Diesel, the company that assembles the trucks in Iran, confirmed that sanctions had prompted Volvo Trucks to terminate their partnership agreement.

"They have decided that due to the sanction on Iran, they couldn't cooperate with us," the manager said.

"We had some renovation planned in Iran for a new plant but they refused to work with us."