Iran’s Foreign Ministry:

U.S.-Cuba Thaw Shows Sanctions Ineffective

Date: 21 December 2014 - 19:21

News ID: ۸۷۸۳

TEHRAN (Dispatches) – The U.S. decision to normalize ties between Cuba after decades of estrangement is proof that sanctions don’t work, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said.
"Policies of isolationism and sanctions do not yield results,” Afkham was quoted as saying yesterday by the Mehr news agency.
U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro’s announced a thaw in relations after half a century. Some analysts have drawn an analogy with Iran, which the U.S. hasn’t had ties with since 1980.
"Almost everything the president said about the failure of America’s Cuba policy could be said of our policy on Iran,” said Trita Pasi and Ryan Costello of the Washington-based National Iranian American Council.
"There is little reason to expect that another 35 years of isolation” would cause Iran to surrender,” they wrote in the Huffington Post.
The U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Iran after students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran, holding 52 diplomats hostage for 444 days. The takeover followed the 1979 revolution that brought the Islamic Republic to power.
The U.S. and its allies have also imposed economic sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.
Afkham said the recent development surrounding Washington-Havana relations could be a step toward decreasing tensions in the region.
The spokeswoman hailed "the resistance of by the Cuban nation and statesmen and their insistence on revolutionary principles” which forced the U.S. to change its policies.