Daily Times

The US poses as a democratic country, but the policies it has pursued speak otherwise. The White House has been consistently violating international laws and democratic principles by imposing economic sanctions–economic terrorism– to materialise its desire for dominance.

Its ugly game of a regime change, through economic sanctions, has caused humanitarian crises in various countries.

The imperialist US is using economic embargo as a tool to heel a sovereign state on the one pretext or the other that dares defy its hegemony. Ordinary Iranians are bearing the brunt of perpetual economic sanctions imposed by the US and its allies.

In 2015, President Hassan Rouhani signed a deal called “The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ( JCPOA),” backed by the UN, with Obama’s White House and five other world powers (the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China) to limit Iranian uranium enrichment from 3.673 per cent to five per cent in return for the lifting of the US sanctions. The following year, as a result of the lifting of economic embargo, Iran’s economy bounced back as its GDP grew 12.3 per cent. It fuelled financial growth and international investment in the energy sector. At the start of 2018, Iran’s crude oil production reached 3.8 million barrels per day (bpd), according to data gathered by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

The US doesn’t want to see Iran as a strong economy. This is why after having seen Iran’s economy gaining sustainability and bouncing back, Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the US out of a multilateral pact; terming it a “terrible deal” as well as accusing Tehran of violating the terms and conditions contained in the JCPOA. Subsequently, it reinstated sanctions on the Iranian energy, shipping and financial sectors last year.

Despite other signatories and the European Union being convinced that Tehran was holding to its part of the bargain on the nuclear deal, they have failed to mitigate the economic havoc unleashed upon Iran; given the US’s dominance in the world trade.

According to estimates from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the renewed sanctions and the subsequent flight of international investment out of Iran, its GDP contracted by 3.9 per cent in 2018. The Fund said that Iran’s oil-dependent economy further shrank by six per cent in 2019 in the face of expiry of sanctions waivers given to China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Greece and Italy. Most of the oil was bought by eight countries, which were granted six-month waivers by the US.

By March 2019, Iran’s oil exports had fallen to 1.1 million bpd on average, according to the consulting firm, SVB Energy International, because Taiwan, Greece and Italy had halted Imports altogether, while two biggest buyers, China and India, had reduced them by 39 per cent and 47 per cent respectively.

According to the IMF, annual inflation in Iran would reach 37 per cent this year. One of the highest rates in the past two decades and potentially rise in further oil exports continued to fall.

US special envoy for Iran Brian Hook said, “We have effectively zeroed -out Iran’s export of oil,” while further adding, “We have collapsed foreign direct investment. We have seen significant asset flight leaving the country. Iran is in a recession. Inflation is creeping up near 50 per cent.” First, the US created a humanitarian disaster by imposing economic war, started dramatising the crises through servile western media to garner global support for its ugly scheme of regime change. The current population of Iran is around 82 million.

One-third of the Iranians currently live below the poverty line.

Poverty in Iran, as defined by the Iranian government, means a monthly income of fewer than 180,000 tomans, the equivalent of roughly $600, for a family of five people. More than two million children are said to be breadwinners. Poverty has pushed many into bondage. Thus, children are deprived of childhood and are open to violence and other types of abuses.

The US doesn’t want to see Iran as a strong economy

90 per cent of the “labour force” lives below the poverty line. The unemployment rate is hovering between 25 and 30 per cent. Due to the poverty of parents in rural Iran, under-age marriages of girls are a new normal.

In the past 12 months, the cost of red meat and poultry has increased by 57 per cent; milk, cheese and eggs by 37 per cent and vegetables by 47 per cent according to the Statistical Centre of Iran.

The crippling economic conditions compel the downtrodden to sell their vital organs like kidneys, liver, bone marrow and corneas to the wealthy in need of such organs.

“The sanctions are designed to harm the general public, particularly the vulnerable people like women, children, elderly and patients,” said Majid Takht Ravanchi, Iran’s permanent representative to the UN in New York.

Speaking during a special session of the UN Security Council in June, he said, “[Unilateral US sanctions] harm the poor more than the rich, the ill people more than the healthy people, infants and children more than adults. In short, those who are most vulnerable suffer the most.” A recent meticulously written report by Abbas Kebriaeezadeh, professor of pharmacology at the Tehran University of Medical Sciences, suggested that the US sanctions “are killing cancer patients in Iran,” and indirectly, creating dire drug shortages and skyrocketing prices.

“United States sanctions on Iran, Cuba and Venezuela are illegal under international law, lead to a “denial of basic human rights” and amount to “economic starvation,” a UN rights expert warned.

Idriss Jazairy, UN special rapporteur on sanctions and human rights, said in a scathing statement in May this year that the US efforts at “regime change through economic measures,” and “making ordinary people pawns and hostages” in countries like Iran, Cuba and Venezuela are “contrary to international law” and have “never been an accepted practice of international relations.”

According to a report from the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), the US sanctions increased hunger and disease, exacerbated the economic crises and led to the premature deaths of 40,000 Venezuelans between 2017 and 2018.

Hassan Rouhani, in his recent UNGA speech, said, “We are victims of merciless economic terrorism.”

Killing Iran economy through economic sanctions or engaging it in regional war is the ultimate objective of the United States of America. This is the reason behind accusing Iran to be behind the attack on Saudi oilfields by Yemeni Houthi rebels.

However, Mohammed Bin Salman showed political maturity saying he wanted a peaceful solution to crises. Iran’s support to the rebels is an open secret hence she should come clean. Given crimes committed against humanity in Iraq, Libya Syria and Afghanistan, and victimisation of weaker countries through economic starvation highlighted, there can no second opinion that the White House is a global terrorist country to be reined in the earlier, the better.

Idriss Jazairy has justifiably called on the international community to challenge the US “blockade,” which he said constitute a “threat to world peace and security. Given US’s economic warfare initiated against Iran, Nam Chomsky, in his recent interview to Euro News, called America a “biggest terrorist.”

The writer is an Educationist and a freelance contributor