BICOM

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has said US sanctions have hit the Iranian economy harder than the war with Iraq in the 1980s.

President Rouhani said in a speech yesterday: “Today, it cannot be said whether conditions are better or worse than the (1980-1988) war period, but during the war we did not have a problem with our banks, oil sales or imports and exports, and there were only sanctions on arms purchases.”

Rouhani also called for unity among Iran’s political factions to overcome the conditions. He said: “The pressures by enemies is a war unprecedented in the history of our Islamic revolution … but I do not despair and have great hope for the future and believe that we can move past these difficult conditions provided that we are united.”

Rouhani’s comments came amid rising tensions with the US. Last week, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing new sanctions on Iran’s iron, steel, aluminium and copper industries, which target 10 per cent of its export economy. The Trump administration also announced last month the end of sanction waivers on buyers of Iranian oil that it had provided to Greece, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China, India and Turkey.

The US is sending the USS Arlington, with amphibious vehicles and aircraft on board, to the Gulf to join the USS Abraham Lincoln strike group, as well as sending a Patriot missile-defence system to the Middle East. The Pentagon said US B-52 bombers had arrived at a base in Qatar, adding that the military movements were a response to a possible but unspecified threat to US forces in the region by Iran. Iran dismissed the claim as nonsense.

The new commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, Major General Hossein Salami, said in a parliamentary session on Sunday that the US has started a psychological war in the region.