Geneva Deal Nail in Coffin of Anti-Iran Sanctions: Spokeswoman
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The nuclear accord between Tehran and major world powers in Geneva has delivered a mortal blow to the sanctions imposed by the West, Iran’s foreign ministry spokeswoman said, expressing hope that all the cruel bans would soon be lifted.
“After the Geneva deal, we believe, the structure of (anti-Iran) sanctions has cracked, and its demolition has begun,” Marziyeh Afkham said on Tuesday.
She made the comments in her weekly press conference here in Tehran.
Afkham also expressed hope that all the unilateral sanctions and those imposed by the UN Security Council would be removed in the final stage of the Geneva deal, saying the Islamic Republic regards the unilateral sanctions as “cruel”.
Tehran and the Group 5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) signed a six-month deal on Tehran’s nuclear program after three rounds of intensive talks in the Swiss city of Geneva on November 24.
The deal is intended to allow time to negotiate a comprehensive agreement on the nuclear program, with the aim of bringing a decade-long standoff over Iran’s nuclear program to an end.
Elsewhere in her remarks, Afkham touched on the US officials’ acknowledgement that the anti-Iran sanctions have all failed, and added, “The American officials… have admitted that Iran’s progress has not stopped under the sanctions.”
US President Barack Obama said in an hour-long talk at the Brookings Saban Forum 2013 on Saturday that history tells him that sanctions and threats would not make Iran step down from its nuclear activities.
“I think what it comes down to is the perception potentially that if we just kept turning up the pressure, new sanctions, more sanctions, more military threats, that eventually Iran would cave," Obama said.
But, he added, "history tells us that calculation does not reflect an honest understanding of the Iranian people and the Iranian regime."
And in relevant remarks last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif stressed that economic sanctions against Iran “have failed utterly.”
“When sanctions started, Iran had less than 200 centrifuges. Today Iran has 19,000 centrifuges, so the net product of the sanctions has been about 18,800 centrifuges that have been added to Iran’s stock of centrifuges,” Zarif said in an interview with Al-Jazeera on December 3.
“So sanctions have utterly failed in that regard.”
