President Rouhani to Americans
TEHRAN (Kayhan Intl.) -- President Hassan Rouhani said Saturday Iran cannot trust the U.S. when it comes to transfer of money to purchase coronavirus vaccines because Washington is known for "stealing” Iran’s funds.
Rouhani said Tehran has been making efforts to buy the vaccines through COVAX, a global initiative aimed at working with vaccine manufacturers to provide countries worldwide equitable access to safe and effective vaccines.
"We provided the money needed to buy vaccines, but they said first we needed the approval of OFAC (the Office of Foreign Assets Control – a financial intelligence and enforcement agency of the U.S. Treasury Department) to make the payment. Then we tried to transfer the money through another country. Again, they said the money must first be transferred to an American bank,” said the president.
"How can we trust you when you are infamous for theft,” Rouhani addressed the U.S., referring to previous cases of American seizure of Iranian assets.
"The Americans hampered our efforts not just for purchasing vaccines. We can also see the trace of the U.S. wickedness with regards to anything we want to buy,” he said.
Rouhani said his government is doing its best to make the illegal U.S. sanctions ineffective, referring to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei’s recent advice to officials to focus on neutralizing the sanctions.
"The Leader called for rendering sanctions ineffective; we are doing this not on an hourly basis, but every moment during the process of exporting and buying goods from abroad,” the president said.
"We will definitely overcome the problem and make the sanctions ineffective,” Rouhani added.
Swaths of the Iranian economy are retooling in response to more than two years of U.S. sanctions, finding pockets of resilience in the country’s large domestic economy, U.S. daily the Wall Street Journal reported from Tehran on Friday.
Iranian companies are increasingly producing the sorts of goods that Iran had long imported from abroad, while smaller, growing companies have picked up hiring, the paper said. According to Iranian government statistics, Iran’s non-oil industry’s gross revenues have grown 83% in the past couple of years, overtaking the sanctions-battered energy sector’s.
Iran’s central-bank governor in December said the country’s economy grew by 1.3% from March to mid-September, largely driven by domestic manufacturing.
"Even if sanctions severed Iran’s entire oil exports, the country’s economy could continue to survive,” Mohsen Tavakol, a sanctions expert at the Atlantic Council, told the Journal.
"Sanctions were the right nudge for us,” Hassan Oskoui, managing director at Zarsima Nami Rasa, an Iranian beauty-care company, told the paper.
"We provided the money needed to buy vaccines, but they said first we needed the approval of OFAC (the Office of Foreign Assets Control – a financial intelligence and enforcement agency of the U.S. Treasury Department) to make the payment. Then we tried to transfer the money through another country. Again, they said the money must first be transferred to an American bank,” said the president.
"How can we trust you when you are infamous for theft,” Rouhani addressed the U.S., referring to previous cases of American seizure of Iranian assets.
"The Americans hampered our efforts not just for purchasing vaccines. We can also see the trace of the U.S. wickedness with regards to anything we want to buy,” he said.
Rouhani said his government is doing its best to make the illegal U.S. sanctions ineffective, referring to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei’s recent advice to officials to focus on neutralizing the sanctions.
"The Leader called for rendering sanctions ineffective; we are doing this not on an hourly basis, but every moment during the process of exporting and buying goods from abroad,” the president said.
"We will definitely overcome the problem and make the sanctions ineffective,” Rouhani added.
Swaths of the Iranian economy are retooling in response to more than two years of U.S. sanctions, finding pockets of resilience in the country’s large domestic economy, U.S. daily the Wall Street Journal reported from Tehran on Friday.
Iranian companies are increasingly producing the sorts of goods that Iran had long imported from abroad, while smaller, growing companies have picked up hiring, the paper said. According to Iranian government statistics, Iran’s non-oil industry’s gross revenues have grown 83% in the past couple of years, overtaking the sanctions-battered energy sector’s.
Iran’s central-bank governor in December said the country’s economy grew by 1.3% from March to mid-September, largely driven by domestic manufacturing.
"Even if sanctions severed Iran’s entire oil exports, the country’s economy could continue to survive,” Mohsen Tavakol, a sanctions expert at the Atlantic Council, told the Journal.
"Sanctions were the right nudge for us,” Hassan Oskoui, managing director at Zarsima Nami Rasa, an Iranian beauty-care company, told the paper.
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