Iran describes US moves as desperate

TEHERAN — Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday dismissed the United States’ political and economic pressures against the Islamic republic as desperate.

Since last month, when US President Donald Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal which lifted most sanctions in 2015, the rial currency has dropped up to 40 percent in value, prompting protests by bazaar traders.

Speaking after three days of those protests, Khamenei said that the US is exerting “in vain” economic pressure on the Iranian nation to divide and turn the people against the establishment.

The US has told allies to cut all imports of Iranian oil beginning in November, a senior State Department official said on June 26.

However, Iran will overcome the new wave of sanction pressures by the US, Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Friday.

“The American officials believe that Iran would surrender under the pressure of sanctions, but it will become obvious soon that the Iranian nation will successfully overcome the challenge of new sanctions,” Velayati said.

Velayati described the US anti-Iran sanctions as “a kind of revenge”, stressing that the Iranian government and nation will stand together in confronting the sanctions.

The US is exerting ‘in vain’ economic pressure on the Iranian nation to divide and turn them against the establishment.” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader

‘Appropriate measures’

Meanwhile, the country is studying ways to keep exporting oil and other measures to counter US economic sanctions, its state news agency IRNA reported on Saturday.

With the return of US sanctions likely to make it increasingly difficult to access the global financial system, President Hassan Rouhani has met the head of parliament and the judiciary to discuss counter-measures.

“Various scenarios of threats to the Iranian economy by the US government were examined and appropriate measures were taken to prepare for any probable US sanctions, and to prevent their negative impact,” IRNA said.

On Sunday, Iran’s First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri said that Iran will allow private companies to export crude oil to help beat US sanctions.

“Iranian crude oil will be offered on the bourse and the private sector can export it in a transparent way,” Jahangiri told an economic event in Teheran broadcast live on state television.

“We want to defeat America’s efforts ... to stop Iran’s oil exports,” he said.

“Oil is already being offered on the bourse, about 60,000 barrels per day, but that has been only for exports of oil products,” Jahangiri said. Iran has an oil and petrochemicals bourse as part of its mercantile exchange.

The government and parliament have also set up a committee to study potential buyers of oil and ways of repatriating the income after US sanctions take effect, Fereydoun Hassanvand, head of the parliament’s energy committee, was quoted as saying by IRNA.

“Due to the possibility of US sanctions against Iran, the committee will study the competence of buyers and how to obtain proceeds from the sale of oil, safe sale alternatives which are consistent with international law and do not lead to corruption and profiteering,” Hassanvand said.