Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in a post on his Twitter page on Wednesday that there was a great difference between the US words and deeds, as it kept offering aid to Iran while preventing the country from using its money to provide food and medicine for its people.
"US keeps repeating empty offers of aid. Here's an idea: Put your policy where your mouth is. Just stop blocking Iranian people's right to use their own money frozen in (South) Korea, Iraq and Japan, to be used for food and medicine amid pandemic," he said.
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh
To prove its intentions, Khatibzadeh added, the US could ask its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) agency to unfreeze Iran's money in South Korea and send it to a Swiss trade channel meant to help Iran avoid US sanctions.
While refusing to lift their sanctions that are hampering Iran's efforts to contain coronavirus, US officials have instead claimed readiness to aid Iranians, with Trump saying "all they have to do is ask."
US State Department Spokesman Mortan Ortagus in a recent tweet had claimed "the U.S. is concerned by the worsening COVID-19 situation in Iran and we reiterate our offer of assistance first made in February".
Iran has slammed the offer as a repulsive display of hypocrisy amid Washington’s sanctions and medical terrorism targeting Tehran.
The Iranian foreign ministry had earlier declared that despite Washington’s claims of cooperation to transfer drugs to Iran via the new Swiss-launched payment mechanism, the US is troubling the process amid the coronavirus outbreak in the country.
Although US claims that medicines and medical equipment are not under sanctions, they have practically blocked the transfer of Iran’s financial resources in other countries into the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement (SHTA), former Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi said.
Back in June, Governor of the Central Bank of Iran Abdolnaser Hemmati said Korean banks are preventing Iran from using billions of dollars of its oil money to buy foods and medicines which the US alleges are exempt from its sanctions.
Iran says South Korea is in arrears on payment of about 7 billion US dollars for Iranian oil before the US President Donald Trump's administration reimposed sanctions on Tehran's oil industry in November 2018.
Iranian authorities have been pressing South Korea to release the frozen funds so that it could use them for purchase of basic goods.
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