TEHRAN, Jun 29 (NNN-IRNA) – Iran’s Foreign Minister said yesterday that, the West has kept harming Iranian victims of chemical warfare through sanctions, that block access to essential medicine, more than three decades, after Iraq dropped chemical bombs at Iranian cities.
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks in a message to mark the 36th anniversary of Iraq’s chemical attack at Iran’s Sardasht, according to a statement published on the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s website.
On Jun 28, 1987, during the Iran-Iraq war, regime of the then-Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, dropped mustard gas bombs on Iran’s north-eastern city of Sardasht, killing 130 people and injuring 8,000 others.
Amir-Abdollahian said, there are “credible” evidence and “undeniable” documents attesting to the “practical and widespread” participation of a number of Western governments, especially those of Germany, France, Britain, the Netherlands and the United States, in supplying the chemical weapons to Saddam’s regime, and assisting it in using them against Iran.
He said, the West have been “rubbing salt into their wounds” by imposing sanctions on Iran, that prevent the import of medicine needed by those wounded in the chemical attacks.
Iran has been under U.S. sanctions for the past four decades. The sanctions intensified following the U.S. unilateral withdrawal from a 2015 nuclear deal in May 2018, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Although the U.S. claimed that humanitarian items, including medicine and foodstuffs, are not included in the sanctions list, its embargoes on Iran’s oil exports and banking sector have, in practice, prevented the country from importing such goods.
