TEHRAN - Abbas Araghchi, the secretary of Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations (SCFR), has said the victims of U.S. economic sanctions are much more than those killed in the U.S. atomic bomb attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.

“The number of victims of the U.S. cruel sanctions in the world far exceeds the number of victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Araghchi said, according to scfr.ir.

Araghchi, the former Iranian deputy foreign minister and chief nuclear negotiator with the 5+1 nations, made the remarks in a meeting with Yuri Konno, a Japanese peace activist and first female entrepreneur and founder of the Dial Service Company.

Yuri, who had visited Tehran to participate in the first international congress on “women of influence”, has experienced the Second World War but survived despite being seriously injured in the U.S. aerial bombings.

“Considering this experience, I am trying to help spread peace in the the world ,” Yuri remarked.

At the meeting, Araghchi also referred to Iran’s experiences from Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran in the 1980s during which the Iraq army used chemical weapons against Iranian civilians and troops.

“Like Japan, Iran has been a victim of the enemy’s use of weapons of mass destruction and, therefore, there is a scope for cooperation between the two countries in order to create a world free of war and sanctions,” the veteran diplomat pointed out.