Iran warned other nations that US sanctions targeting Tehran threaten their sovereignty too, cautioning that yielding to such pressure could mark return to “full-scale colonialism”
Iran has warned that new US sanctions targeting Tehran are not just an issue for Iran but threaten the sovereignty of all independent nations, with the country’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei describing them as a possible return to “blatant, full-scale colonialism”.
Baghaei said the measures went beyond an economic war against a single country. Instead, he said, they represented an attempt by the United States to extend its authority over other independent UN member states. The Iranian spokesperson said Washington was seeking to dictate how governments, banks, businesses and airports in other countries conducted trade with Iran.
“No government has the right to force foreign banks, enterprises, or airports, each operating under the exclusive jurisdiction of their own sovereignty, to refrain from engaging in legitimate trade with a third country,” Baghaei said, according to Iran’s Fars news agency.
He warned that countries giving in to such pressure risked losing control over their own economic and political decisions.
The Oxford Dictionary defines colonialism as, “the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.”
Iran Says Sanctions Threaten Sovereignty Of All Nations
Baghaei said secondary sanctions imposed by one country on entities in other sovereign states had no basis in international law.
“Such secondary sanctions have no basis in international law,” he was quoted saying. He also said that they “violate the fundamental principle of sovereign equality enshrined in Article 2, Paragraph 1 of the UN Charter”.
He described economic coercion as an “international offence and a wrongful act” and said the use of sanctions alongside a naval blockade would further threaten the sovereignty of other countries.
According to Baghaei, such measures could make the sovereignty of states conditional on the decisions of another power. He said this would be a broader threat to the international system, rather than merely a dispute between Washington and Tehran.