Iran said Thursday the new sanctions approved by the U.S. House of Representatives aimed at curbing Tehran’s controversial nuclear drive will only serve to complicate efforts to negotiate a solution.<\/p>\n
The House approved the new measures on Wednesday as a means to prevent Iran gaining nuclear weapons capability, sending a signal to Tehran before its new president is sworn in in parliament on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The measure, which overwhelmingly passed 400-20, would slap strict limits on Iran’s already heavily-sanctioned oil industry, as well as on other sectors of the country’s ailing economy, including the automobile and mining sectors.<\/p>\n
“The only influence these sanctions have is to make finding a solution to existing issues more complicated and more difficult… especially on the issue of nuclear talks,” foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Araqchi told ISNA news agency.<\/p>\n
“Imposing sanctions on Iran is a failed policy and will not help find a rational solution… Insisting on this policy is surprising as it will not change the Islamic republic’s stance,” he added.<\/p>\n
Critics say the vote was badly timed, coming just days before Hassan Rouhani, a former Iranian nuclear negotiator under reformist leader Mohammad Khatami, takes over as president.<\/p>\n
Advocates of diplomacy have suggested that the United States should use the departure of outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a chance to seek engagement with Iran, instead of maintaining a rigid posture.<\/p>\n
But House Speaker John Boehner made a special plea for passage of the Nuclear Iran Prevention Act before Congress goes on its annual summer break at the end of this week.<\/p>\n
The new legislation, should it pass the Senate and be signed by President Barack Obama, would require a further cut of one million barrels per day over the next year as a condition for exemptions, amounting to a virtual embargo on Iran’s crude exports.<\/p>\n
Six countries — China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey — still import Iranian oil, but they have reduced their buying since 2012, with Washington granting them exemptions.<\/p>\n
The legislation would also close a loophole in sanctions which the European Union imposed on Iran’s foreign currency reserves by punishing any institution that serves as an intermediary in facilitating currency conversions for Tehran.<\/p>\n
Source:Agencies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iran said Thursday the new sanctions approved by the U.S. House of Representatives aimed at curbing Tehran’s controversial nuclear drive will only serve to complicate efforts to negotiate a solution.<\/p>\n
The House approved the new measures on Wednesday as a means to prevent Iran gaining nuclear weapons capability, sending a signal to Tehran before its new president is sworn in in parliament on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":9742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}