Gov’t Striving to Counter Sanctions

President Hassan Rouhani said the government is doing all in its power to neutralize unjust and illegal sanctions imposed on the country by the administration of outgoing US President Donald Trump.
“We are doing all we can to make these sanctions ineffective and eliminate them, and everybody must work to this end. All three branches [of government] must join hands under the guidance of the Leader [of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei] and I promise people that they will see better days in terms of livelihood, wellbeing and shattering of sanctions,” the president said on Thursday, Press TV reported.
Rouhani called sanctions “the joint work of American radicals, Zionists and reactionary regional regimes”.
Trump’s administration returned the US stringent economic sanctions against Iran after pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a multi-party nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.
Ayatollah Khamenei recently said Iran should not wait even “an hour” to try to have the sanctions removed, if this could be done through an honorable process that guarantees the preservation of the country’s esteem. 
However, the Leader advised the nation and government to focus primarily on neutralizing the sanctions instead of seeking their removal.
The president stressed that the first step is to help neutralize or lessen the effect of sanctions and the second is to eliminate them.
Rouhani referred to Iran’s success in replacing its oil exports, which the US has sanctioned, with petrochemical sales as an instance of its triumph in the face of the illegal bans.
“We should extinguish the blaze of sanctions as soon as possible. We don’t need anybody’s sympathy,” he said.
The president said by potentially relieving sanctions, the enemy would not have done Iran any additional and undue favor, adding that by suspending the sanctions, the Americans would have “stopped their crime” against the Iranian people.
Rouhani promised the people that they would be witnessing better conditions concerning their livelihood and health system toward the end of the year and in the upcoming one.
Iran’s recent inauguration of a whole host of developmental projects “delivered a big blow to the world arrogant powers that had sought to enforce a shutdown on the country,” Rouhani said.
“The ideal they were nursing was to have Iranian people stand in long queues for bread. However, 30 years of US-led economic war did not materialize this objective as would not as many more,” he stressed.