A senior South African government official says the country is ready to resume oil imports from Iran as of “tomorrow,” if sanctions imposed on Tehran were removed today.

“We are definitely negotiating and looking at when to fully resume oil imports from Iran,” Reuters quoted South Africa’s Deputy Foreign Minister Nomaindiya Mfeketo as telling reporters via videolink from Cape Town on Wednesday.

The official added, “For South Africa if there’s a process of doing that lawfully, tomorrow we will do it, if there are no obstacles to that.”

Sanctions were imposed on Iran by the United States and the European Union at the beginning of 2012 under the pretext that there was diversion in Tehran’s civilian nuclear program toward military purposes. Iran categorically denied the allegation, stressing that its nuclear program is only meant for peaceful purposes.

Before the sanctions, the Islamic Republic was the biggest supplier of crude oil to South Africa, which is known as the most industrialized economy in Africa and the continent’s second-biggest consumer of crude oil, which imports around 380,000 barrels per day.

“It depends on how quick those negotiations are ... so that we can sign on the dotted line,” Mfeketo said.

Iran and the P5+1 group of countries – the US, the UK, France, Germany, China, and Russia – held their last round of nuclear talks in the Austrian capital, Vienna, which led to an agreement between the two sides on July 14, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

According to JCPOA, sanctions against Iran's economic sectors, including oil and gas industry, will be lifted in return for certain restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear program.

Only a day after conclusion of nuclear talks between Iran and the sextet, South Africa's government announced that it had never agreed with sanctions against Iran, adding that its oil refiners had suffered from a ban on Iranian crude exports.