Supreme Leader: Enemies Overestimating Sanctions against Iran

The Leader of the Islamic Ummah and Oppressed People Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei blasted the enemies for overvaluing the impacts of sanctions against Iran, and stressed that the claims of the western officials that they will remove embargos if Iran ignores its right of access to nuclear technology are just “lies”.

“Today, our enemies and (their) media are magnifying the issue of sanctions and some (inside Iran) accompany them as well,” The Leader of the Islamic Ummah and Oppressed People Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei said, addressing a large number of people in North Khorassan province on Wednesday.

He reminded that sanctions and embargos are nothing new to Iran, as similar boycotts had been in place before the West started its hues and cries about Iran’s nuclear program.

“They say if the (Iranian) nation desists from its nuclear energy right, they will remove sanctions, but they lie.”

“(Existence of) a relationship between the sanctions and Iran’s nuclear issue is a lie, and it is the pride and rise and persistence of the Iranian nation which has angered them (the enemies),” Ayatollah Khamenei underlined.

Political observers believe that the West has remained at loggerheads with Iran mainly over the independent and home-grown nature of Tehran’s nuclear technology, which gives the Islamic Republic the potential to turn into a world power and a role model for the other third-world countries. Washington has laid much pressure on Iran to make it give up the most sensitive and advanced part of the technology, which is uranium enrichment, a process used for producing nuclear fuel for power plants.

Iran has so far ruled out halting or limiting its nuclear work in exchange for trade and other incentives, saying that renouncing its rights under the NPT would encourage the world powers to put further pressure on the country and would not lead to a change in the West’s hardline stance on Tehran.

Iran is under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West’s calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment. The United States and the European Union have ratcheted up their sanctions on Iran this year to force it to curb its nuclear program.

Iranian officials have always shrugged off the sanctions, saying that pressures make them strong and reinvigorate their resolve to further move towards self-sufficiency.