Top Security Official Shrugs Off US Sanctions against Iran
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani said for decades, the US government has pursued the policy of threats and sanctions against the Islamic Republic but the policy has gone nowhere.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a huge rally held in Tehran on Saturday to mark the “National Day of Fight against Global Arrogance”, Shamkhani pointed to the so-called Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) and said that threats and sanctions have been the US’s main policy against Iran for the past 40 years.
“Neither the threats nor the sanctions have worked,” he said, adding that if they had worked, Iran would not have been able to boost its missile power, launch satellites, or develop its nuclear program.
In early August, US President Donald Trump signed into law one of the most wide-ranging sanctions measures of the last five years, known as CAATSA, which enhances three separate sanctions programs targeting Iran, Russia and North Korea.
CAATSA expands US sanctions targeting Iran's ballistic missile program, and enhances the legal basis for existing sanctions targeting the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC). It would also establish an additional US legal basis for sanctions targeting IRGC on the allegations of support for terrorism.
Iran says the fresh sanctions violate the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
In mid-September, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei lambasted the US for violating the JCPOA, warning that any “wrong move” concerning the nuclear deal would draw reaction from Iran.
Iran and the Group 5+1 reached the 159-page nuclear agreement in July 2015 and started to implement it in January 2016.
Since the historic deal was signed in Vienna, the IAEA has repeatedly confirmed the Islamic Republic’s compliance with its commitments under the JCPOA, but some other parties, especially the US, have failed to live up to their undertakings.
