The United States on Friday asked foreign governments to submit detailed reports on humanitarian exports to Iran, a step observers said could have a chilling effect and cast a pall over European efforts to allow trade. President Donald Trump's administration, which has cast Tehran's clerical regime as enemy number one, announced a new "humanitarian mechanism" which it said would help the Iranian people by facilitating "legitimate" trade.

As it announced the initiative, the Treasury Department also said it was blacklisting Iran on charges of money-laundering under the 2001 Patriot Act, effectively forbidding all US transactions with Iranian banks.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019