Sanctions against Iran mistake: Straw

Former British Foreign Secretary and present member of the UK Parliament Jack Straw says sanctions against Iran over its nuclear energy program are a mistake and should be lifted.

Efforts should be made to remove the sanctions, Straw said in a Thursday meeting in Tehran with the families of Iranian nuclear scientists assassinated by foreign-backed terrorists.

Straw, who is also the British head of Iran-Britain Parliamentary Friendship Group, expressed hope that Iran and European countries would improve bilateral relations, IRNA reported.

At the beginning of 2012, the United States and the European Union imposed new sanctions on Iran’s oil and financial sectors in a bid to prevent other countries from purchasing Iranian oil and conducting transactions with the Central Bank of Iran. The sanctions were imposed under the allegation that Iran’s nuclear energy program is geared towards non-civilian purposes.

The unilateral bans by the US and the EU come on top of four rounds of Washington-instigated UN Security Council sanctions against Iran under the same pretext.

Tehran has categorically rejected the allegation that its nuclear work is not peaceful, stressing that as a committed member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it is entitled to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Straw further said that the British government and parliament condemn terrorism in all its forms, emphasizing that London has slammed the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists.

Several Iranian nuclear scientists including Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, Massoud Ali-Mohammadi and Majid Shahriari have been assassinated in the past couple of years by US-Israeli agents in a bid to slow down the pace of Iran’s scientific progress.

In a statement on June 28, 2012, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said all the Israeli-linked elements behind the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists had been apprehended.