TEHRAN - Head of the Judiciary's High Council for Human Rights Ali Bagheri Kani  on Thursday called on the relevant human rights bodies no to keep mum on the U.S. “cruel sanctions” on the Iranian people.

In a meeting with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet in Geneva, Baqeri Kani said the world human rights bodies should not help legitimize the U.S. behavior through their silence.

In a speech to the Human Rights Council on Feb. 24, Bagheri Kani said those who impose sanctions on “life-saving medicine” are not eligible to be a member of council.

In late December, President Hassan Rouhani said Iran was passing “the worst days” of sanctions imposed by the U.S., praising the people for their resistance and patience. 

Rouhani hailed the people for their firm stance and resistance in hard days.

Pointing to the consequences of sanctions on the country, Rouhani said, “If we were not engaged in an imposed-economic war, we could enjoy a sum of $200 billion out of which $100 billion was income of crude export. Now we do not have that hefty amount of money.”

“We are managing the country without that $200 billion income. People are not living comfortably, however, we (the government) try as much as we can,” he went on to say. 

The president said if the sanctions against Iran were lifted, he would be ready to meet the leaders of the countries party to the 2015 nuclear deal.
 
“If they remove sanctions, we are prepared for talks at the level of 5+1 group’s heads of state,” Rouhani remarked.

The nuclear deal was signed between Iran and the 5+1 group (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council) plus Germany in July 2015. 

Under the agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and confirmed by the UN Security Council Resolution 2231, Iran was obligated to put limits on its nuclear program in exchange for the termination of economic and financial sanctions.

However, Donald Trump, a presidential candidate favored by hawks in the U.S. and Israel, started harsh attacks against the JCPOA, vowing to tear it up if elected president.  

Finally, in May 2018, he officially abandoned the JCPOA and introduced the harshest ever sanctions in history against Iran. 

The Trump administration not only returned the previous sanctions lifted under the nuclear deal it added new ones, including a total ban on Iran’s oil exports.

Trump’s administration has even threatened to penalize any country or company that does business with Iran. 

In response to the abrogation of the JCPOA by the U.S. and a failure by the remaining parties, particularly the Europeans, to protect Iran’s economy from the sanctions' effects, Iran has started to partially reduce its commitments to the JCPOA in accordance to the paragraph 36 of the multilateral agreement.
  
(Paragraph 36 provided a mechanism to resolve disputes and allows one side, under certain circumstances, to stop complying with the deal if the other side is out of compliance.)

Iran started to scale down its commitments after waiting for a full year that the remaining parties honor their obligations.
 
However, Tehran has insisted if sanctions are lifted it will immediately reverse its decisions.

MJ/PA