Iran’s Rights Council Slams US Criminal Sanctions against Iranians’ Lives, Health

 By Al-Akhbar Newspaper, Agencies

Iran’s top human rights council strongly condemned recent US sanctions on Iranian financial system and banks, noting that by curtailing the country’s access to medicine and other humanitarian equipment, Washington’s sanctions are taking direct aim at Iranian people’s lives and health.

“Enforcement and intensification of unjust, illegal and inhuman sanctions by the US regime and their implementation by certain European countries ... have not only caused problems for Iran’s normal economic, financial and banking relations [with other countries], but also made purchase of drugs, diagnostic kits, and laboratory equipment practically impossible amid difficult conditions caused by the coronavirus pandemic,” Iranian Judiciary’s High Council for Human Rights said in a statement on Sunday.

On Thursday, the United States targeted Iran’s financial sector by imposing sanctions on 18 Iranian banks with the Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin claiming that the US sanctions would "stop illicit access to US dollars."

The Trump administration has claimed humanitarian goods are exempt from its sanction, but a web of sanctions tied around Iran over years has made foreign banks and companies extremely wary of engaging in any trade with the country.

Since the re-imposition of sanctions, Swedish medical products firm Molnlycke Health Care has stopped delivering Mepilex dressings which are trusted around the world to treat a wide range of chronic and acute wounds, including in EB patients, according to Iranian media reports.

The new measures could sharply hinder Iran’s ability to secure supplies of food and medicine at a time the country struggles to contain a resurgence of the coronavirus outbreak, Bloomberg said.

“The US regime had already embarked on committing ‘crime against humanity’ through its unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA [Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers] and imposing toughest sanctions against the Iranian nation,” the rights council stated.

It added that “Most recently, through imposition of illegal sanctions on Iran’s semi-public and private banks with the goal of creating obstacles on the way of [the country’s] access to food and medicine and humanitarian equipment, [the US] has opened a new chapter in its records of crimes against humanity while demonstrating the acme of its vile nature and hostility toward the Iranian nation.”

“Imposing sanctions on these banks, which provided remarkable services for obtaining humanitarian aid as well as procurement of food and medicine, has clearly encroached on [the Iranian] people’s right to medicine and food, which is another instance of violation of human rights and international law [by the US regime],” Iran’s top rights body said.