Iran urges U.S. to lift sanctions amid virus

As Iran struggles with a devastating coronavirus outbreak, a broken economy and a severe shortage of medical equipment, it says that U.S. trade sanctions are taking Iranian lives and has called for the United States to lift them on humanitarian grounds.

Iran’s plea is gaining traction around the globe, winning support from allies like Russia and China, but also the European Union, the United Nations secretary-general, rights groups and nearly three dozen members of Congress, who have appealed to the Trump administration to suspend the sanctions for as long as Iran is battling the coronavirus.

Iran, a global epicenter of the virus, has confirmed more than 47,000 cases and more than 3,000 deaths, although public health experts estimate the real toll to be several times higher.

“We had always said the sanctions are unjust, but coronavirus revealed this injustice to the world,” Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said in a recent video message. He referred to the sanctions as “economic terrorism.”

The issue has raised questions about the collision of punishing U.S. sanctions with a deadly pandemic, including whether Iran is trying to exploit the crisis to achieve a long-held goal of lifting sanctions, whether the United States is using the virus to squeeze Iran beyond what sanctions alone could do, and what responsibility the United States has for a disaster caused at least partly by Iran’s own inept response.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been unequivocal, tweeting Saturday that Iran’s “concerted effort to lift U.S. sanctions isn’t about fighting the pandemic. It’s about cash for the regime leaders.”

He has accused Iran’s leaders of “trying to avoid responsibility for their grossly incompetent and deadly governance.”

When Zarif accused the United States of waging “medical terror,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus tweeted “Stop lying,” adding, “It’s not the sanctions. It’s the regime.”

If anything, the United States has doubled down, imposing fresh sanctions as recently as two weeks ago, even as it offered Iran medical aid to help combat the pandemic; aid Iran has refused.