Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has said that Washington’s sanctions against Iran are a “form of dictatorship”.

“We don’t believe in applying sanctions to force countries to accept certain ideologies and to change governments. It is not only the particular country that will suffer, but all the trading partners also will suffer economically. In a way, it is a form of dictatorship. A dictatorship that is worse than that in a country, it is international,” he told Aljazeera in an interview published on Sunday.

He added that Malaysia lost out on a big market when the U.S. applied sanctions against Iran.

He also discussed the state of the global economy and its interconnectedness. He argued the U.S. is leading the world in the wrong direction when it comes to multilateralism.

“Becoming very nationalist is good. But not at the expense of other people. Every country should care about itself but that needing to be protective or secure doesn’t mean confronting others. It’s better if we learn to work together,” he said. 

“We were going a long way towards multilateralism. But now nationalism seems to affect many countries,” he added.

According to Reuters, Mahathir said during a speech at the Doha Forum on Saturday that the U.S. sanctions on Iran violate the United Nations charter and international law.

“Malaysia does not support the reimposition of the unilateral sanctions by the U.S. against Iran,” he said.

“Such sanctions clearly violate the United Nations charter and international law; sanctions can only be applied by the United Nations in accordance with the charter,” he added.

U.S. President Donald Trump quit the 2015 nuclear deal in May 2018 and introduced the harshest ever sanctions on Iran as part of the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.

NA/PA