Senior Commander: Intensified Sanctions Good Opportunity for Rouhani

Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces for Cultural Affairs and Defense Publicity Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri underscored that the imposition of a new round of US unilateral sanctions against Tehran will provide President-elect Hassan Rouhani with an opportunity to plan for countering Washington’s moves.
“The recently intensified US sanctions on the threshold of the formation and planning of the new government (in Iran) provides a good opportunity for the president and statesmen of the Islamic Republic of Iran to devise proper plans strategically and tactically to confront the Americans and their allies’ operations in this arena and implement their plans,” Jazayeri said in Tehran on Saturday.

The US House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday to tighten sanctions on Iran oil sales.

The Iranian foreign ministry on Friday blasted the US for the new sanctions, and said the policy of sanctions would lead to the exacerbation of the current problems between the two countries.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Araqchi said that the world community has repeatedly condemned the US unilateral sanctions.

Reacting to the US House of Representatives anti-Iran sanctions bill, Araqchi said the international public opinion and the global community have repeatedly strongly condemned the US governments move in issuing unilateral sanctions against nations. The experience over the past three decades has shown that the obsolete methods have no influence on the will of Iranian nation to restore its rights; rather, this has drawn consensus of the US analysts and Iranologists.

He added that on this basis, the act of the US House of Representatives only shows victory of the theory of unilateralism, as symbol of the ideology of neo-conservatives and multilateralism of sovereignty in the US.

He went on to say that the US new sanctions, issued irrespective of all political developments and views of experts, are clear example of wrong measures at an improper time.

Araqchi underlined that the policy of sanctions is a defeated policy and under present conditions it only makes present problems, specially those concerning nuclear subject, further complicated and more difficult.

Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.

Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West’s calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment.

Tehran has dismissed West’s demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians’ national resolve to continue the path.

The Islamic Republic says that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of IAEA’s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.