Foreign Ministry has gathered a host of documents which indicate that some banks, concerned about US sanctions, are preventing international financial aid by those who are willing to help Iranians, Zarif said Sunday on the sideline of an event in Tehran. The documents will soon be published, he highlighted.
US officials are forced to dismiss what they are doing but these claims are not true, said Zarif, adding that the US measures can be regarded as ‘crime against humanity’.
Record rainfalls since March 19 have flooded some 1,900 cities and villages across Iran, claiming over 70 lives and causing hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to Iranian water and agriculture infrastructures. Floods have affected several provinces in the north and west of the country including, Golestan, Mazandaran, Lorestan, and Khuzestan.
While many countries have delivered humanitarian aid to Iran's Red Crescent Society for the flood-hit regions, the society says that no international financial aid has been received due to US sanctions on banking transactions.
Iran not to wait for Europe
Elsewhere in his remarks, Zarif also criticized European countries’ significant delay in meeting their JCPOA commitments. “I don’t know how much time Europeans need for a preliminary mechanism?” he framed.
“They are way behind in fulfilling their commitments … They should not think that Iran would wait for them,” he added.
Donald Trump unilaterally pulled US out of Iran Nuclear Deal, formally known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in May 2018, re-imposing tough sanctions against the Iranian nation. This is while other signatories of the deal and the international community have criticized US measures and voiced support for the agreement.
In late January 2018, European signatories of the deal announced the establishment of a special trade mechanism dubbed as INSTEX (Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges) in a bid to save JCPOA after the withdrawal of the United States. The mechanism, which is yet to prove its effectiveness, is said to initially cover trades of food, medicine and medical devices and to gradually include other areas.
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