Iranian Minister Downplays Effects of Oil Price Falls

Iranian Justice Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi underlined that the country is ready to defuse the possible impacts of the fall in crude prices on Iran’s economy, reminding that the country has tolerated bigger pressures in the past.
Addressing the US, certain western countries and the enemies of the Iranian and regional nations, Pourmohammadi said, “You have put your hands in each others’ to lower the oil price on one hand, and impose political and psychological pressure against our country, aimed at defeating the will of the Iranian nation on the other hand.”

“That is while the Iranian nation has in recent past tolerated greater pressures and fears nothing in safeguarding the Islamic prestige and the country’s territorial integrity, dedicating many martyrs fearlessly,” he said in Northern Iran on Tuesday.

Pourmohammadi said that Saudi Arabia is devastating oil revenues of Islamic countries, and added, “Saudi Arabia extracts and exports 9 million barrels of oil per day, while we are only exporting one million barrels and this both a shame and a humiliation for that country.”

In relevant remarks earlier this month, Iranian Government Spokesman Mohammad Baqer Nobakht downplayed the impacts of the fall in crude prices over the Iranian economy, ensuring that the government can manage the country even with lower oil revenues.

“The oil market is a completely political and fluctuating market and the pressure exerted on us falls on those Arab states which increase production and give special discounts to lower the oil prices too, and they will also sustain losses as well,” Nobakht told reporters in Tehran.

“They think that they can pressure Iran by continuing such conditions, but just the same way that we are now acting exactly on the basis of the budget planning despite the decreased (oil) prices in the current year, we will move on the same course in future as well,” he added.