TEHRAN – President Hassan Rouhani has called on the global community to disregard U.S. sanctions and to avoid being complicit in “U.S. inhumane measures” against Iran, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

“This nation does not expect countries unknowingly complying with the sanctions to be complicit in U.S. inhumane measures,” the president said at a meeting of the government’s Economic Coordination Headquarters on Tuesday.
 
U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew his country from a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers – officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)- on May 8, 2018, reimposing sweeping economic sanctions on Iran, restrictions that American officials described as the “the strongest sanctions in history.”

In September, the U.S. sought to reimpose all UN sanctions on Iran but all JCPOA parties along with almost all UN Security Council members, with the exception of the Dominican Republic, opposed the U.S. push to restore the international sanctions.
 
Rouhani compared the impact of the U.S. sanctions on Iran with the economic implications of Iraq’s war against Iran in the 1980s, saying the impact of the U.S. “economic war” will become obvious at later times just like the impact of the eight-year war.

“The scope of the economic war imposed on the country will become clearer to the people in the future, just like the precise dimensions of the imposed war, which became clear only after the war was over,” the president said.

He also called on the Foreign Ministry and other legal institutions to make efforts to unblock Iranian assets in frozen bank accounts abroad.

Earlier, Rouhani said the Americans seek to topple the Iranian government through sanctions and economic pressures.

“When Saddam [Hussein] attacked Iran, he told reporters that, within few days, he will be making an interview with them in Ahwaz. In 2018, the Americans, while imposing an economic war [on Iran], also said they would be entering Tehran in few months and that these guys will not be able to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the victory of the Revolution,” said the president, adding, “The U.S. asked the Europeans to give it only a three-month time span. Two European leaders told me that the U.S. told them that ‘if you refrain from helping them [Iran], the job will be done in three months given the economic pressures we have put on them.”

He went further to say, “Saddam’s goal was to topple the establishment, hurt the country or at least rip an agreement. The Americans wanted the same thing. They wanted to overthrow the establishment, create unrest, or destroy an agreement. But they failed to achieve their goals and their calculations were wrong.”

First Vice-President Ishaq Jahangiri also echoed the same remarks, saying the main goal of the U.S. sanctions is to bring Iran’s economy to collapse.

“Their goal was to bring about the collapse of Iran’s economy but the government, through planning, did not allow them to achieve their goal. Fortunately, the country’s economy is still kept afloat,” Jahangiri said.

PA/PA