Iran: US sanctions ‘a symptom of weakness’

Iran’s envoy to the United Nations said the United States is making waves on the scene of international trade by targeting other countries with unilateral sanctions.

“Confronting multilateralism by resorting to unilateral actions, including imposition of embargo and sanctions, is not a sign of strength,” Gholamali Khoshroo said on Thursday, Press TV reported.

“Rather, it is a symptom of the weakness of intellect – it betrays an inability in understanding a complex and interconnected world,” he told a UN General Assembly session to discuss a draft resolution over ending US sanctions against Cuba.

The ambassador cited the cases of Washington’s sanctions against the Latin American country and the Islamic Republic, and how the bans had come to trouble trade on the international level.

The US embargo on Cuba “violates the United Nations Charter as well as the international law and constitutes an obstacle for international cooperation,” he said.

He added that “the economic war that the US had initiated under the rubric of new sanctions not only targets the Iranian people, but also entails harmful repercussions for the people of other countries, and that war has caused a disruption in the state of global trade.”

The US, Khoshroo said, was addicted to imposition of sanction as an instrument to achieve its bilateral goals. Washington was also a “perfidious player in the international scene,” the envoy noted, pointing to its withdrawal in May from its multilateral nuclear accord with Iran.

US rulers were, at the same time, refusing to learn from “their shortsighted and disastrous policy” on Cuba and the Middle East, Khoshroo concluded.