Iran accuses US of conspiring to starve people by targeting channels of food, medicine

After the United States announced fresh sanctions on Iranian banks, Tehran accused Washington of conspiring to starve a population amid a pandemic by blocking the remaining channels to pay for food and medicine. Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif took to Twitter to denounce the new sweeping sanctions as “latest of cruelties”, adding that the culprits and enablers of such acts “will face justice.”

Iranian Central Bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati said that some of the banks facing sanctions are responsible for transferring resources to buy medicine and food. However, he stressed that though the banks have struggled to supply medicine and food due to the “maximum pressure”, they have not allowed any shortage of ways and means to allow a scarcity in essential humanitarian goods.

“Rather than having any economic effect, the American move is for US domestic propaganda and political purposes, and shows the falsity of the human rights and humanitarian claims of US leaders,” Hemmati said in a statement.

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US on humanitarian goods supply

The US Treasury Department has maintained that the new set of prohibitions didn’t apply to the transaction of humanitarian goods like agricultural commodities, food, medicine or medical devices. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that the sanctions will continue until Iran stops its support of terrorist activities and ends its nuclear programs. 

“Today’s actions will continue to allow for humanitarian transactions to support the Iranian people,” Mnuchin said in a statement.

The US has targeted Iran’s financial sector by announcing sanctions on 18 major Iranian banks as Washington intensifies its “maximum pressure” campaign ahead of November elections. The US State Department said that the new tranche of sanctions was aimed at choking off the funds used to carry out “its support for terrorist activities and nuclear extortion.”

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei of ignoring the request of the health ministry to increase the spending amid public health crisis, and instead funding the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and regime’s Basij forces “that terrorize the Iranian people every single day."

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