TEHRAN – The Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee will restudy the CFT - a legislation to combat financing of terrorism – on November 18, the committee chairman Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh said on Sunday.

“The bill to join the convention of financing terrorism will be studied by the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee on Sunday, Aban 27, [November 18] with the presence of a representative from the Guardian Council and related bodies,” he said, according to IRNA.

Abbasali Kadkhodaei, spokesman for the Guardian Council, announced on November 4 that the council had found 20 faults with the CFT and rejected it.

“The faults includes items which were against the constitution and the Islamic law, and there were also items which were ambiguous for the council and we sent them back to the Majlis (parliament),” he told the Mehr news agency. 

The parliament voted in favor of the CFT on October 7. A total of 143 lawmakers, out of 268 ones present in the 290-seat parliament, voted in favor of the bill, 120 voted against and five abstained.

To become a law, however, the oversight Guardian Council should vet the bill for compliance with the Constitution.

‘U.S. behavior to make Iranians more united’

In an interview with ISNA, Falahatpisheh also said that the renewed U.S. sanctions are an “insult” to the Iranians, however, he said the U.S. behavior will make the Iranians “more united”.

He also described remarks by the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as an “insult”.

Pompeo said in an interview with BBC Persian on Wednesday that Iranian officials must listen to Washington “if they want their people to eat.”

In May, U.S. President Donald Trump officially withdrew Washington from the 2015 nuclear deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and ordered sanctions on Iran. The first round of sanctions went into force on August 6 and the second round, which targets Iran’s oil exports and banks, were announced on November 4.

Iran’s Ambassador to London, Hamid Baeidinejad, on Saturday slammed new U.S. sanctions against Iran as “crimes against humanity”, calling for those enforcing the sanctions to be brought to justice.

“US sanctions on Iran have no legal basis and thus are illegal. They affect the essential needs of all strata of Iranian society. Those involved in implementing them should be held accountable as persons perpetuating crimes against humanity, and brought to justice,” Baeidinejad said in a tweet.
 
NA/PA