Tehran
Iran urged U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday to lift sanctions which it said were hampering Tehran’s fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tehran also said it had approved Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine for domestic use, and that it was trying to buy vaccines from AstraZeneca and other companies.
Sanctions reimposed by former US President Donald Trump formally exempt food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies, but many foreign banks have been deterred from doing business with Iran.
“Since (Biden’s) administration claims not to be anti-science like the previous one …, one expects it to free the transfer of Iran’s own foreign exchange resources to fight the coronavirus and for health and food, and lift banking sanctions quickly,” government spokesman Ali Rabiei told state television.
He also threatened that Iran would block short-notice inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities by the United Nations atomic agency if Washington did not lift sanctions.
In 2018, Trump pulled Washington out of Iran’s 2015 nuclear pact with world powers aimed at limiting its nuclear programme, and reimposed U.S. sanctions that had been lifted under it.
During a visit to Moscow, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, said on Tuesday that Tehran planned to import and produce the Sputnik V vaccine.—Reuters
