Hossein Shirzad added that the US officials have made a false claim that financial transactions for the export of agricultural products and foodstuff to Iran were not under sanctions, but “recently, US special representative on Iran Brian Hook explicitly announced in a meeting with European ministers that the special license for sending humanitarian aid (food and medicine) to Iran is off the table.”
He added that the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has so far added 36 items from food processing and supplementary equipment to the list of sanctions. Some 975 Iranian companies and individuals are also under US sanctions, among which at least two banks and 12 companies are active in the food and medicine fields, he added.
The deputy minister also maintained that the Swiss initiative that was supposed to act as a guarantee for the transfer of money for Iranian medicine and foodstuff by bypassing US sanctions has yet to be settled.
Shirzad went on to stress, however, that the Ministry of Agriculture has played an effective role in neutralizing the US measures against the food security in Iran by “increasing the volume of strategic reserves, reducing dependency and vast storage of basic goods.”
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