TEHRAN -- Iran’s government has rebuked brutal U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Republic, saying the West is “taking revenge” on Iranians by waging a “campaign of genocide” against the country’s patients.
Spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi made the remark in a Persian-language post on his twitter account while projecting that 220 Iranian thalassemia patients would be the victims of sanctions imposed by the United States against Iran by the end of the Iranian calendar year falling on March 2023.
“Seventy thalassemia patients lost their lives in the year 2018, 90 in 2019, 140 in 2020 and 180 died last year due to sanctions. According to the projections this year, 220 patients will be the victims of cruel sanctions. Add to this statistics, EB (epidermolysis bullosa) patients and all those in need of special medicinal products,” Bahadori Jahromi wrote.
“The West is taking revenge on Iranians through a genocide campaign against the patients,” he added.
Earlier, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani censured the U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Republic, saying the bans were the “backbone” of the so-called American human rights regulations.
“The whole Iranian people, without any distinction and discrimination, have been struggling for many years with the brutal sanctions of the United States, which have targeted their livelihood, jobs, health and normal life,” Kanaani said.
“Even EB children were not exempted from the unilateral, illegal and cruel U.S. sanctions. Sanctions are the backbone of American human rights,” he noted.
The United States, under the hawkish former president Donald Trump, unilaterally walked out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in May 2018 and reinstated crippling sanctions under the so-called “maximum pressure” campaign.
Over the past five years, the sanctions have targeted various aspects of Iranian lives ranging from economy to health and medical system.
The talks to salvage the agreement kicked off in the Austrian capital of Vienna in April last year, months after Joe Biden succeeded Trump, with the intention of examining Washington’s seriousness in rejoining the deal and removing anti-Iran sanctions.
Despite notable progress, the U.S.’s indecisiveness and procrastination caused multiple interruptions in the marathon talks.