JCPOA Institutionalised Iran Sanctions Instead of Stopping Them: IRGC

General Jafari said officials are not paying attention to the potentialities inside the country, and this has augmented the impact of Western sanctions.

“We have a lot of potential and capabilities inside the country, but we are facing strategic negligence, which means officials are not paying enough attention to local potentialities, and instead of looking inside, they are looking outside [the country],” he said, as reported by Fars News Agency.

“Inattention to domestic capabilities and the local agriculture domain led the enemies to using sanctions as a lever to pressure the country,” said the top commander.

He said the enemies of Iran accused the Islamic Republic of seeking to develop nukes and put pressure on the country, but “the nuclear industry is an essential need of the country.”

“Anyway, discussions and negotiations in recent years boiled down to the JCPOA, which turned into a tool to institutionalise rather than prevent sanctions against our country,” he said.

The top commander said Washington’s withdrawal from the agreement was yet another reason to believe that the White House cannot be trusted.

“Today, we are seeing once again that the US is not reliable. The United States’ move was aimed at shattering Iran’s resistance and is not something new, and we’ve been witnessing wicked moves by enemies for years, so we need to rely on ourselves and look [at the potential] inside [the country],” the top commander underlined.

He said if Iran focuses on domestic capabilities, it will not need Western countries at all.

The commander noted that European countries should give Iran assurances that the country’s interests under the JCPOA will be preserved, “but they are unlikely to give such guarantees, in which case we should move on the path to self-sufficiency and nuclear industry using domestic potential.”