Iran Condemns New US Sanctions, White House Statement

In a statement on Monday, Mousavi condemned the unilateral and futile sanctions imposed by the US Treasury Department against a number of Iranian individuals.

“The US regime’s addiction to unilateral sanctions has put the regime’s statesmen in a totally passive position, in which they announce some hollow sanctions every now and then in order to relieve themselves and escape the frustration caused by their failure against the Iranian nation’s iron will,” the spokesman said.

“As we repeatedly announced earlier, such measures only reveal the regime’s desperation and inability to use diplomatic or logical solutions, which can be evaluated within the framework of the United States’ bullying approach toward other countries and important international and global issues,” he added.

The US Treasury on Monday announced the new sanctions against the financial assets of what the US called the “inner circle of both military and foreign affair advisors” to the Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, a senior administration official said in a call with reporters to discuss the sanctions.

The US sanctions block any US-controlled property or interests held by those targeted, and prohibit anyone or any entities in the United States from dealing with those sanctioned.

In his Monday remarks, the Iranian spokesman further criticized a statement released by the White House on November 4, describing it as a distortion of reality and flagrant.

“Through propaganda and brouhaha and using an impolite and undiplomatic language, the White House always tries to misrepresent the realities and distort the history by keeping open an already-closed case, which was settled and closed 40 years ago through the Algiers agreements between the two governments of Iran and the US,” Mousavi added.

He went on to say that the US administration cannot hide the crimes it committed against the Iranian nation from those in the 1953 coup and later through robbery, plunder, murder, and economic terrorism through such rhetoric, and replace the positions of the executioner and the victim.

“What the US administration has attributed to Iran is indeed what the Iranian nation and other nations in the world demand from the US government. It is the US administration that must stop [backing] terrorism – especially its support for the state-sponsored terrorism of the Zionist regime which loots other countries’ resources – as well as piracy, economic terrorism, and other abnormal and unusual behaviours, and instead choose a civilized, wise, and lawful path,” he added.

In a statement on Monday, released on the 40th anniversary of the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran, Washington claimed that Tehran targets “innocent civilians for use as pawns” in its foreign relations, and vowed that it will continue to impose its “crippling” sanctions until Iran changes this and what it called its other “hostile” behaviours.