An Iranian lawmaker blasted the US for practicing economic terrorism against Iran, and said that the Iranian women and children have been deprived by Washington of access to medicine and medical treatment.
“During the past 40 years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been targeted by illegal sanctions that have inhumanely targeted women and children’s human rights, specially their right to hygiene and access to medicine and treatment,” Iranian legislator Farideh Oulad Qobad said in her speech addressing the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the United Nations Human Rights Council.
In relevant remarks last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that the new US sanctions on his country’s construction sector was a vivid demonstration of Washington’s failure in its maximum pressure policy against Tehran.
In a post on his official Twitter account on Friday, Zarif slammed the United States for imposing a new round of sanctions against Tehran, this time targeting the construction sector, saying the new restrictions show Washington’s “maximum failure” in what it calls “maximum pressure” policy vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic.
“Subjecting construction workers to Economic Terrorism only manifests maximum failure of ‘maximum pressure’,” Zarif said.
He once again reiterated the Iranian people’s determination to stand firm in the face of Washington’s behavior. “The US can sanction every man, woman and child but Iranians will never submit to bullying.”
The top Iranian diplomat called for the United States to abandon failed policies and return to the landmark nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), between Iran and 5+1, instead of digging itself deeper.
The US on Thursday imposed sanctions on Iran’s construction sector despite Washington’s announcement a week ago that it had created a new mechanism to facilitate “permissible trade” with Tehran.
The US State Department issued a fact sheet, singling out the sale of software used for industrial purposes, raw and semi-finished metals, graphite and coal used in Iran’s construction sector as targets for the new sanctions.
Also on Thursday, the State Department announced a separate batch of sanctions against what it described as the sale of “strategic material” being used “in connection with Iran’s nuclear, military, or ballistic missile programs.”
Fars