Official: Iran’s Main Trade Partners Not to Succumb to US Pressures

Iran’s main trade partners are unlikely to accept the new set of US sanctions against Tehran which will kick in from February 6, an Iranian trade official said, and underlined Iran will continue its normal economic interactions with these partners.

Starting on February 6, the new US sanctions will prevent Iran from reclaiming earnings it gets from its oil exports trade except to buy goods from the country concerned.

The United States has aggressively ramped up its use of financial sanctions this year to pressure Iran to abandon its civilian nuclear program.

Speaking to FNA about the new financial sanctions, member of the presiding board of Tehran’s Chamber of Commerce Seyed Hamid Hosseini said, “The sanctions due to be implemented on February 6 won’t have any impact, at least, in the oil sector and there will likely be no problem in the oil sector for the next 6 months.”

“On the other hand” Hosseini said “some of our country’s (trade) partners, for example china, will no way accept the US sanctions.”

“It seems that we will have no problem with our major partners, that is China, Turkey and India, and our relations will continue as before.”

In January, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei warned of the arrogant powers’ full-fledged attempts to pressure Iran, but meantime, underlined that the Iranian nation will not surrender to enemies’ plots and sanctions.

“The front of the arrogance has made a maximum use of its efforts and power to force the Iranian nation to surrender to sanctions and pressures, but this nation will tolerate the difficulties since it has understood the enemy’s plot and tactic and its strategic goal, and it acts upon its correct understanding and recognition,” Ayatollah Khamenei said in a meeting with a number of Iranian Armed Forces’ counterintelligence officials and personnel in Tehran.

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.