TEHRAN - Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Saturday that President Hassan Rouhani's letter to his counterparts was a warning that the U.S. sanctions is not only putting Iranians' life in danger but also will pave the ground for a faster spread of COVID-19 to other countries.

"In a letter to counterparts Hassan Rouhani informs how efforts to fight COVID19 pandemic in Iran have been severely hampered by U.S. sanctions, urging them to cease observing them: It is IMMORAL to let a bully kill innocents. Viruses recognize no politics or geography. Nor should we," Zarif wrote on his Twitter account, implying that no government should keep mum on such brutal sanctions on Iran. 

In a letter to a number of world leaders on Saturday, President Rouhani said countering the coronavirus outbreak entailed “regional and international coordination and cooperation”.

Rouhani said containing this “huge and dangerous crisis” is not possible by one country.

“The management of this huge and dangerous crisis is not possible by a single country, let alone a country (Iran) which is facing numerous problems in accessing international financial markets and providing its needed goods,” the president asserted.
 
The president said the U.S. sanctions on Iran and observance of these bans by certain countries is not only “illegal and in contravention of the (UN) Security Council Resolution it is also immoral and anti-human.”

Rouhani also said that it was necessary to counter the U.S. economic terrorism against Iran which was showing its “ugly and anti-human face” more than any other time.

Iran, which is under unprecedented sanctions in history, is facing a burgeoning rise in the number of people infected with the deadly coronavirus called Covid-19.

Iran is the most affected country in the Middle East.
 
In a regular news briefing on Sunday, Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said the number of Iranians infected with the virus has reached 13,938.

The number shows that the Iranians infected by the virus now account for about 9 percent of the cases across the world.

Of this number, Jahanpour added, 724 patients have died.

Saturday and Sunday were the deadliest days since the virus was first diagnosed in Qom, a city 130 kilometers south of the capital Tehran.

In 24 hours, from Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon, 113 persons were added to the number of the dead. Also, from Friday to Saturday, 97 persons were added to the fatalities .

A couple of days ago, Zarif called the U.S. ban on sale of medicine to Iran as an instance of “medical terrorism”.

In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres released on Thursday, Zarif said, “While the virus ravages our cities and towns, our population—unlike those of other countries affected—suffer under the most severe and indiscriminate campaign of economic terrorism in history, imposed illegally and extra-territorially by the Government of the United States since it reneged on its commitments under Security Council Resolution 2231 in May 2018.”

MJ/PA