TEHRAN — Tehran has criticized some South Korean companies’ move to leave Iran’s market due to U.S. sanctions and bullying, saying the Islamic Republic will never forget its friends during tough times.

“Some foreign companies, which have left Iran in recent years and months submitting to the U.S. bullying, should know that returning to the Iranian market will be very difficult,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said via Twitter on Friday night.

According to trade principles, keeping one’s foothold in a country’s market is harder than entering it, Mousavi said.

In his post, Mousavi also attached a photo of workers removing a banner of the South Korean company Samsung in Iran.

Samsung and its fellow South Korean company LG Electronics – for which Iran has been a key market in the Middle East – reportedly pulled down their last advertisement banners in Iran on Friday.

The two companies had cut their trade relations with Tehran in the past months, submitting to U.S. sanctions imposed on Iran after Washington withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The JCPOA was struck between Iran and the five permanent UN Security Council members — the United States, Russia, China, France, and the UK — as well as Germany and the European Union.

The accord came under increasing strain ever since U.S. President Donald Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from it in May 2018 and unleashed the “toughest ever” sanctions against Iran despite worldwide objections.

On May 8, exactly one year after the U.S. abandoned the deal, Tehran announced that its “strategic patience” is over and began to partially reduce its commitments to the agreement at bi-monthly steps.

Eventually, in its fifth and final step on January 5, Iran suspended all limits under the JCPOA. 

MH/PA