First Vice President Es’hagh Jahangiri said Iran’s is a sizable economy that cannot be isolated from the international economy.
“Iran's is a big economy and ranks 18th in the world according to global economic institutions,” Jahangiri told a meeting of ambassadors and heads of Iran’s missions overseas on Tuesday, Mehr News Agency reported.
“Iran annually has close to $200 billion worth of trade with the world, and its economy is not going to be easily isolated from the world economy,” Jahangiri said. He went on to say that Iran is a country that not only has the smallest foreign debt in the world, but has $100 billion in assets outside the country. According to the senior official, Iran's internal debt is not comparable with that of other countries, for example, “in Japan the internal debt is 200% of the country's GDP. In comparison Iran’s internal debt is negligible.”
He said the value of government assets is several times over and above the huge liquidity (that has caused serious concern among independent economists and experts), and if it wants to sell part of the assets it can reduce a large part of the liquidity in the market.
US Attempts Slammed
The vice president slammed the US attempts to instigate the Iranian people against the government through economic pressures, saying that the people will never side with a hostile foreign power to damage their own country and government. He said Tehran has good relations with its neighbors and the US attempts to divide them Iran will not succeed. Jahangiri admitted that Iranians at the middle and lower-end of the economic ladder are grappling with difficulties. He dismissed Washington’s oft-mentioned claims that its unilateral sanctions do not target the masses.
The vice president noted that like the American government, that has set up special teams for contacting countries cooperating economically with Iran, to force them to end their collaboration, Iran’s representatives abroad should also prepare the ground for closer economic interaction with the outside world.
Coordinated Efforts
He called on Iranian diplomatic missions to coordinate their efforts with the government. Iran has been under mounting US pressure and possible sanctions after Donald Trump’s decision in May to withdraw from a 2015 agreement between world powers and Iran over its nuclear program. Bitter foes since the 1979 revolution, Washington and Tehran have seen an unusual escalation of rhetoric in recent days. The rial plunged to a record low against the US dollar on the unofficial market on Monday. The dollar was sold for 92,000 rials, compared to 75,000 last week while gold prices soared to levels unseen in recent history.
