Sanctions empower Iran: Cleric

The US imposed sanctions on Iran in the past four decades but it led to Iran’s progress in the fields of defense and missile, Ayatollah Seddiqi said.

He noted that due to the sanctions, Iran owns lots of knowledge-based enterprises.

Today, the Iranian nation builds fighter jets and unmanned aerial vehicles and it can produce its medical equipment and medicines, Hojjatoleslam Seddiqi underlined.

He said that Iran is now more powerful than the past four decades and on the contrary, the US power is in decline.

The US President Donald Trump announced early May that Washington would pull out of Iran nuclear deal and reinstate sanctions, which had been lifted under the accord.

The first round of the sanctions snapped back into place in August, with the second round which will target the energy and oil sectors taking effect on November 5.

This is while other signatories to the deal (i.e. Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia) have thus far criticized Washington’s unilateral move and repeatedly stressed their commitment to the deal.