TEHRAN - Iranian First Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri said on Monday that the international bodies especially the World Health Assembly should not be silent on the U.S. illegal policies.

“We expect the international bodies especially the World Health Assembly not be silent on the U.S. administration’s illegal policies which are directly related to the people’s lives and use all the tools they have to counter the U.S. administration’s inhuman policies,” he said during a speech at a World Health Assembly forum on Kish Island in the Persian Gulf.

The U.S. is lying when it says sanctions have targeted Iran’s government and not the Iranian people, he said.

“Unfortunately, the U.S. administration has caused problems in area of medicine by imposing toughest sanctions and has endangered lives of many people despite all the human rights’ law,” he said.

President of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the Islamic Republic of Iran Alireza Marandi said in a speech at the forum that the U.S. had endangered the lives of many Iranian patients by imposing “unjust” food and drug sanctions, according to Fars news agency.

It has been repeatedly claimed by the Trump administration’s officials that sanctions against Iran do not include food and medicine, however, the sanctions have restricted transfer of money which affects importation of food and medicine.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed in a tweet on November 12, 2018, “The U.S. does not, and never did, sanction food and medicine. They are exempt from sanctions.”

Kianoush Jahanpour, spokesman for Iran’s Food and Drug Administration, told ISNA in an interview published on November 2018 that the claim by Washington that medicine is exempted from sanctions is a “big clear lie”.

Sanctions include food and medicine and the only point is that these two items have not been mentioned in the sanctions list announced by the Trump administration, he said.

Limits on financial transactions cause problems in the process of buying and producing medicine, Jahanpour added.

The Trump administration imposed sanctions on Parsian Bank in October 2018, one of Iran’s most reputable private-sector institutions.

Policy analysts and sanctions experts say Parsian processed much of Iran’s humanitarian trade transactions and was trusted by European firms. It was one of the Iranian banks whose anti-money-laundering procedures were up to international standards, said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, an expert on business relations between Iran and Western countries.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif posted letters on Twitter in November 2018 which he indicated were from four European pharmaceutical companies announcing the end of their business activities in Iran.

NA/PA