US-led sanctions on Iran: Invasion of a nation’s rights

A prominent political analyst says illegal US-engineered sanctions against Iran, which have been in place almost since the Islamic Republic’s inception, constitute, “an invasion of a nation’s rights.”

“It is transpiring gradually that a country does not need to wage a military war against another nation in an effort to paralyze it and that imposing brutal sanctions or tightening them can be well tantamount to an act of war,” Dr. Ismail Salami wrote in an article published on the Press TV website.

“The US war against Iran has already started,” Salami said, proceeding to catalogue the US hostilities toward the Iranians in the mold of sanctions ever since the early 1980s when the Islamic Republic was in the grip of the Iraqi war.

“Washington has long been making unflagging efforts to push Iran to the farthest margins of political and economic isolation even when Iran was not working on its nuclear energy program,” the Iranian author stressed.

Last week, the US House of Representatives repeated a Senate action in voting for additional illegal sanctions against Iran. The congressional action, pushed by the influential American pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, intends to further punish all banks, insurance firms and shipping lines involved in Iran’s oil exports.

The so-called compromise bill would supposedly build on the oil trade sanctions signed into law by US President Barack Obama back in late December, expanding penalties on foreign firms that conduct business with Iran’s national oil company and tanker fleet. It intends to make it more difficult for the Islamic Republic to receive payments for the sale of its petroleum products.

Dr. Salami said the West has yet to realize that Iran “is not a country solely dependent on oil resources. Rather, it has at its disposal myriad natural resources to rely on.”

“Ergo, blocking Iran’s oil flow to other countries will not be so damaging to the country as the West imagines. On the contrary, such an act will surely prove irreversibly damaging to world economy; the oil prices will rocket up beyond control; the global economic security will be caught up in an unmanageable whirlpool and the rest of the world including the US and Europe will have to suffer immensely for this strategic folly.”

Many prominent international lawyers, including Franklin Lamb and Francis Boyle, contend that Iran is entitled to file a lawsuit with the International Court of Justice against the US, France, the UK and their allies, on behalf of all Iranian citizens being harmed by illegal and political economic sanctions.

“To a critical mind, the sanctions are to be seen as a metaphorical declaration of war on Iran,” Dr. Salami said, “Albeit the US and its allies will be the ones who will suffer most.”