TEHRAN – Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif said on Sunday that the new U.S. regulations is even targeting imports of medicine by Iran.

“Now, U.S. Treasury is targeting not merely food but also our imports of medicine,” Zarif tweeted.

In a move that the Treasury Department claimed would ease the shipment of food and medicine into Iran for humanitarian reasons, the Trump administration has announced a move to establish a system of “permissible trade.”

There was never any legal basis for restricting humanitarian aid under U.S. law, though U.S. hostility toward any shipment of anything to Iran made it de facto all but impossible, and banking statements scared many away from even trying.

Statements from NGOs were quick to criticize the effort, saying that far from clearing the way to allow such aid shipments, the U.S. was likely making it even harder to accomplish with new regulations from the Treasury Department.

To send aid to Iran, the Treasury Department will demand institutions submit “substantial and unprecedented” information, all invoices and details of all customers, and whether any of them were on U.S., EU, or UN blacklists.

Zarif said, “Contrary to its deceptive claims, new U.S. regulations will aggravate economic terrorism on ordinary Iranians.”

This is enough of a hassle that some analysts are predicting that there will be “not a single banker in the world” willing to accept these new conditions, and subsequently, it will have a chilling effect on aid, according to antiwar.com.

In his Sunday tweet, Zarif said U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “voiced his delusion that Iranian people must bow to the U.S. "if they want to eat".

PA/PA