US Sanctions Failed to Disrupt Iranian Economy: Rouhani

Rouhani made the remarks on Tuesday after a joint meeting with Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani and Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani.

“The goal of the Americans was to cut our oil exports, but I would like to tell people clearly that our oil exports are much better than before November 4,” he said.

“Therefore, Washington was not successful in its oil policies. During the recent OPEC meeting in Vienna, they worked hard to keep OPEC’s oil production unchanged, but fortunately OPEC members resisted and non-OPEC countries made the same decision.”

The Trump administration in August re-imposed sanctions against the Islamic Republic that had been lifted as part of a nuclear agreement reached under the Obama administration. The sanctions had been lifted in exchange for limits on Iran’s nuclear program.

After the US re-imposed its illegal sanctions on November 4, it expected to see chaos in the Iranian economy, but the great nation of Iran and all the economic activists acted in a way that, fortunately, the plot was thwarted, Rouhani said.

He added that the central bank, economic sectors, and the great people of Iran behaved in a way that the whole world understood calm has been restored more than before, the government’s official website dolat.ir reported.

The president further mentioned that all the efforts are made to maintain this calm and address the people’s problems.

“A framework has been developed to determine how the revenues of non-oil exports enter the market and the country. Through this, we are anticipating an ideal solution to the problems of our forex incomes, and we will continue this strategy,” he noted, hailing the exporters’ efforts for good progress over the past year and an increase of more than 13% in the country’s exports.

President Rouhani also referred to the Islamic Republic’s regional policies, and said the moves will benefit the people of the region.

“The situation in Yemen is so that those who wanted to occupy this Arab country feel they have no other option but to make peace with the Yemenis. We have always supported the Yemeni-Yemeni negotiations,” said the Iranian president, highlighting that the signs of restoration of peace to Yemen can now be seen more evidently.

He also pointed to the relative restoration of peace to Syria, and said this means the Islamic Republic of Iran has been successful in regional affairs.