Iraqi: Compensating for 12 Years of Sanctions Will Take Time

Abbas Araghchi, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister and head of the committee overseeing the implementation of the JCPOA, emphasized that compensating for the "12 years of damages caused by sanctions" will take time and it cannot be expected that everything will return to its previous state within a four-month period. In response to questions from the Mehr News Agency, Araghchi stated that even the damages from the eight-year war were not compensated in four months, so it is unrealistic to expect that the damages from 12 years of sanctions could be compensated in four months. He explained that it is clear that once obstacles are removed, it will take time for conditions to return to their original state. For example, when oil sanctions are lifted, Iran's oil production will not return to previous levels overnight, and it is natural that markets and customers have been lost during this period. The Deputy Foreign Minister extended this reasoning to the banking sector, adding that "it will certainly take time for these economic relations, which have been severed for 10-12 years and whose networks have been destroyed, to be revived and rebuilt, and we must consider a reasonable timeframe for this matter." He also mentioned that "some are engaging in mischief, mostly foreign actors. They do not want these achievements to bear fruit, and we are working to counter them." Since the implementation of the nuclear agreement between Iran and the West in late January 2016, President Hassan Rouhani's government has faced criticism that the implementation of this agreement has not had tangible effects. Part of this criticism relates to existing problems in international banking communications, as government officials state that major European banks still fear establishing banking relations with Iran. From the perspective of Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, and figures close to him, this issue is a sign of the Western parties' failure to adhere to their commitments under the nuclear agreement. Khamenei explicitly accused the United States in April of this year of not adhering to its commitments under the nuclear agreement by maintaining sanctions. He claimed that the U.S. Treasury Department acts in a way that large companies and banks do not dare to do business with the Islamic Republic, which he described as pure hostility. Meanwhile, the United States has repeatedly stated through its Secretary of State that it is not an obstacle to European banks cooperating with Iran. On May 20, John Kerry, in a joint statement with his counterparts from Britain, Germany, and France, and the EU's foreign policy chief, urged banks and traders not to overlook legal investment opportunities in Iran. However, Iran considers these statements insufficient, and Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian Foreign Minister, has called for "practical actions alongside statements" for the implementation of the JCPOA. Zarif reiterated his call for Europe to take necessary steps to facilitate banking transactions during a joint press conference with the Lithuanian Foreign Minister.