No concerns over fresh US sanctions: Iran
Iran says the United States is seeking to wage an extensive “psychological war” against Tehran by imposing a fresh round of sanctions, stressing that the Islamic Republic has no concerns over such US bids.
“There is no room for any concern. We should wait and see that the US will not be able to carry out any measure against the great and brave Iranian nation,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi told IRIB on Friday.
The US plans to impose a second round of sanctions against Iran on Sunday, months after Washington scrapped the 2015 multilateral deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), reached between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries.
The first round of the bans – which had been lifted under the nuclear deal — was re-imposed in August.
Qassemi said the US carried out numerous measures and spent huge sums to exert pressure on international banks, companies, commercial enterprises and institutions in order to dissuade them from working with Iran but all such efforts failed to bear fruit.
“It seems that the US has no more capability to put countries and global economic enterprises under pressure,” the Iranian spokesperson added.
He noted that the US sanctions are aimed at covering the country’s failure in the economic sector and said Iran has the capability and knowledge to manage its economic affairs and the nation’s living conditions.
The Iranian government has also devised all necessary preparations in different sectors to counter the US excessive demands, Qassemi added.
Iran has vowed resistance in the face of Washington’s economic pressure. It is now in talks with other five signatories to the deal – France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China – to help keep the international document alive and blunt the impact of the retuning US bans.
The European signatories to the accord are currently at work to protect their business links with Iran. They will soon launch a mechanism called special purpose vehicle (SPV) with the aim of sidestepping the US financial system by using an EU intermediary to handle trade with Iran.
A senior US administration official said on Friday that Washington has agreed to allow eight countries to continue purchasing Iran’s crude oil.
The official told Bloomberg that waivers were aimed at preventing oil price hikes and would be granted in exchange for continued import cuts.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Monday shrugged off the forthcoming US sanctions against the Islamic Republic, saying Washington would fail to achieve its goals by imposing new bans on Iran.
“The possibility that the US will be able to achieve its economic goals through these sanctions is very remote and there is certainly no possibility that it will attain its political goals through such sanctions,” the top Iranian diplomat said, emphasizing that the new US sanctions would mainly have “psychological effects.”
