US Acknowledges Futility of Sanctions: Iran’s FM
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The US president’s recent comments in defense of a possible deal on Iran’s peaceful nuclear program reveal that Washington has come to the conclusion that policy of imposing sanctions is not effective anymore, Iran’s foreign minister said on Tuesday.
“Mr. Obama’s remarks clearly demonstrate that the United States of America, which has issued direct and indirect military threats and has imposed multiple cruel and illegal sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran over the past several decades, has come to the conclusion that the policy of threats and sanctions has failed,” Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters in the Swiss city of Montreux on Tuesday.
While the Iranian and US diplomats have started a new round of negotiations in Switzerland to nail down a long-awaited agreement on Tehran’s nuclear case, Obama on Monday defended the continuation of diplomatic talks with Iran in a sign of disagreement with Israel.
In an interview in the White House, Obama criticized a plan by Republicans and some Democrats in the US Senate to impose additional sanctions on Iran if no deal is reached by June 30, a deadline Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) have set for an accord.
Obama noted that a comprehensive nuclear deal will be “far more effective… than any military action we could take, any military action Israel could take and far more effective than sanctions will be."
Elsewhere in his comments, the Iranian foreign minister described Obama’s remarks as a tactic to “attract the US public opinion and to counter the propaganda launched by Zionist regime’s prime minister.”
On Monday, Iranian and American teams held a meeting in Montreux with Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry in attendance.
Iran and the Group 5+1 (also known as the P5+1 or E3+3) are in talks to hammer out a final agreement to end more than a decade of impasse over Tehran’s civilian nuclear energy program.
The two sides held bilateral and multilateral negotiations in Geneva earlier in February to narrow down the remaining differences ahead of a deadline for a final agreement by June 30.
