Unilateral sanctions harming Western economies more than Iran: Analyst

A political analyst says the US-engineered sanctions against Iran over its nuclear energy program are doing more damage to the Western economies than Iran’s financial sector, Press TV reports.
“They (sanctions) hurt Iran to a degree, but they hurt themselves as well. But in the long run, in my opinion, they will hurt them much more than Iran; because what they have actually done is that in Iran, despite the short-term difficulties that they cause for the country, they have really forced the country to rethink its political economic and cultural relations,” Mohammad Marandi, professor of Tehran University, said in an interview with Press TV.

He added that apart from economic damages, the sanctions will also create political tensions between the West and other countries.

“These are token sanctions and they are supposed to have a political and psychological effect, but what they do again is that they harm their relations with other countries because they (Western countries) are basically trying to impose their will like traditional imperialists upon other countries,” Marandi noted.

He pointed out that the West’s continued imposition of its policies on the rest of the world will lead to the isolation of the Western states in the long run while bringing more business opportunities to Iran.

“And more and more businesses in the South and in the East, outside of Europe and the United States, are turning to Iran and turning away from doing trade with the West so that they won’t be impacted by sanctions,” he said.

Marandi went on to say that the sanctions also will lose their effect in the long run “because the West has done all it can and they haven’t been able to bring Iran to its knees.”