Ahmadinejad: We Can Manage Iran even If We Don’t Sell Oil for 3 Years

Islamic Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad played down the effects of sanctions on Iran’s oil sales, and said Tehran has reserved so much capital that it will face no problem even if it won’t be able to sell a drop of oil for three years.

“Some people think that they can trouble Iran through oil sanctions but I should say that we have so much reserves that even if we don’t sell oil for two to three years, the country will be administered easily,” Ahmadinejad reiterated, addressing people in the Southern province of Hormozgan on Tuesday.

After months of debates, the EU member states obeyed the US policies and reached an agreement in their meeting on January 23 to sanction oil imports from Iran and freeze the assets of Iran’s Central Bank within the EU.

The Iranian oil ministry in a statement late January downplayed the effects of the US and EU’s unilateral oil sanctions against Tehran, and said such embargoes will merely harm the European economies and oil consuming countries.

European sanctions against Iran’s oil exports will affect the world economy and hurt European and non-European countries, the statement said.

Later, Tehran summoned the ambassadors of Italy, Spain, France, Greece, Portugal and the Netherlands to protest at the EU’s unilateral sanctions against Tehran over its peaceful nuclear program, and warned them that it would soon stop oil exports to these countries if they do not reverse their decision.

After the EU’s decision to embargo Iranian oil supplies, Tehran stopped exports to France, Britain and, of course very recently, Greece. Following Tehran’s oil sanctions against the three and its warning to other EU members, oil prices started soaring in the world markets.