Tehran is preparing a lawsuit in Iran against US individuals involved with economic sanctions imposed by Washington on the Islamic Republic, President Hassan Rouhani said Monday, according to AFP.
Rouhani said the presidency’s legal affairs office as well as the justice and foreign ministers have been tasked with “drawing up a lawsuit against all those within America involved with designing and executing these sanctions”.
The case would be lodged in a “competent court inside Iran,” he said, as quoted by state television.
US President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal last May and later reimposed the sanctions on Iran that were frozen as part of the deal, causing the Islamic Republic to feel the pressure economically.
Speaking on Monday after the last cabinet meeting of Iran’s calendar year which ends on March 20, Rouhani condemned the sanctions as a “crime against humanity” that was hitting ordinary Iranians.
“The world should know that what America has done was not against the Iranian state, it was not against Iran’s nuclear program, it was against the wellbeing of the Iranian people,” he said, according to AFP.
Rouhani said the sanctions targeted “the normal life of the people... the food supply... the medical supply of the people”.
The Iranian President has gradually changed his tone regarding the sanctions. He initially insisted that the new US sanctions have had no effect on Iran’s economy because Washington had already practically reimposed them earlier.
Last December, however, Rouhani said US sanctions against his country amounted to "economic terrorism".
In February, he described the US sanctions imposed on Iran as an economic war being waged on his country. Later that week, Rouhani stated that the US sanctions amounted to "a terrorist act".
