BAGHDAD (Dispatches) -- Iraq has no immediate alternatives to compensate for the energy imported from Iran, which will cause a significant problem in providing enough electricity to meet domestic consumption, especially in the summer, three energy officials, quoted by Reuters, said on Sunday.
“Government has started to implement urgent measures to reduce the impact of the U.S. decision on Iraq power supply,” one senior electricity ministry official told the news agency.
The Trump administration rescinded a waiver on Saturday that had allowed Iraq to pay Iran for electricity, as part of President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran, a State Department spokesperson said.
“We urge the Iraqi government to eliminate its dependence on Iranian sources of energy as soon as possible,” the U.S. embassy in Baghdad said in a statement.
Despite its oil and gas wealth, Iraq has suffered from decades of electricity shortages because of war and has become heavily reliant on imported Iranian gas as well as electricity imported directly from Iran to meet its electricity needs.
Power outages are common, especially in the scorching summer months. Many Iraqis have to rely on diesel generators or suffer through temperatures that exceed 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit).
The waiver that expired applied to direct electricity imports. It remains unclear whether Iraq will be able to continue to import gas from Iran for its power plants.
The U.S. embassy statement asserted that electricity imports from Iran were only 4% of electricity consumption in Iraq
But a spokesperson for Iraq’s Ministry of Electricity, Ahmad Moussa, said that should gas imports also be forbidden it “would cause Iraq to lose more than 30% of its electricity energy” and that the government is looking for alternatives.
A senior official in the electricity ministry, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the ministry had not yet been officially notified of the U.S. decision regarding gas imports. He said Iraq could lose about 8,000 megawatts of energy from power stations operating on Iranian gas and another 500 megawatts of electricity supplied directly by Iran.
There are some 7.5 billion euros in an Iraqi bank account set aside as payment for Iranian gas and about 6.5 billion euros have already been disbursed since the beginning of the year, the official said. The funds are limited in how they can be used and are only released when Iran needs to purchase food, medicine or other humanitarian supplies.
The cancellation of the waiver comes as part of a U.S. campaign of aggressive sanctions against Iran. Trump has mainly pledged to crack down on Iranian oil shipments.
Tehran has blasted Washington for expressing a willingness to hold nuclear negotiations and, at the same time, resuming a full-fledged economic war against the country.  
Iranian officials have said they will not negotiate under pressure. 
“Some bully governments – I really don’t know of any more appropriate term for some foreign figures and leaders than the word bullying – insist on negotiations. Their negotiations are not aimed at solving problems; they aim at domination,” Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said on Saturday.