Iran Not Relying on Swiss Mechanism for Supplying Medicine, Basic Goods

Central Bank of Iran (CBI) Governor Abdolnasser Hemmati has said Iran is not relying on the recently launched Swiss-based mechanism for supplying agricultural commodities and medicine. “Our imports of medicine and pharmaceuticals over the past 10 months have been over 2,000 times the volume of imports from the Swiss financial channel,” Hemmati said. He noted that so far about US$2.5 million worth of medicine has been imported to Iran through the Swiss mechanism, while over US$4 billion worth of such commodities has been imported into the country without the aid of such trade channels.

Referring to the ongoing US obstruction against the transfer of resources for commodity and medicine exchanges, Hemmati emphasized that if Americans really claim to be cooperative regarding the supply of medicines and agricultural goods, they must provide a banking mechanism for direct transfer of funds for such commodities. The central bank and other government bodies have been countering the sanctions so far, and the country’s medical needs have been provided so far and will continue to be provided in the future. According to Hemmati, launching a technical mechanism without the possibility of transferring resources is not sufficient.

According to the Swiss Embassy in Iran, on January 27, an initial payment for a shipment of medicines to Iran was approved after which the Switzerland payment mechanism for humanitarian supplies to Iran named SHTA officially took effect. "Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement (SHTA), a payment mechanism to enable humanitarian goods to be delivered to Iran, is about to be implemented," Swiss embassy in Tehran announced in late January and later the embassy unveiled some medicine imported through the mechanism.

In related remarks, First Vice President Eshagh Jahangiri said on Tuesday that the United States is lying when it claims that pharmaceuticals, medical equipment and foodstuffs are not subject to its sanctions list on Iran. The Trump administration is also lying that it has not blocked ways of procuring medicine and foodstuffs by Iran, the vice president added, reported Fars News Agency. “We have billions of dollars in various countries, including South Korea and Japan, but the US prevents us from utilizing our own money to procure medicine and foodstuffs for the country,” Jahangiri said on the sideline of a ceremony in Tehran. Jahangiri went on to say that the US has formed the “most powerful and the largest monitoring organization” worldwide to assure that its sanctions against Iran are perfectly fulfilled.

“If a tanker tries to transfer Iran’s crude oil, it will be traced. If it [the monitoring organization] can detect the tanker, the monitoring organization will contact the tanker company and will urge it not to transfer Iran’s oil. It is one of the most unprecedented sanctions,” he lamented.

In a press conference on Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said that a Swiss-US “humanitarian” channel set up to enable medicinal imports to Iran was insufficient, noting that the US was originally banned by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) from subjecting Iran’s much-needed medical supplies to sanctions. “Medicine and foodstuffs were never subject to sanctions in the first place, so that they can now create a channel with such a show,” Mousavi said. “We do not recognize any such so-called humanitarian channel.”

US President Donald Trump withdrew Washington from the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in May 2018, and restored the previous sanctions against Iran while ordering new ones. Trump himself has called sanctions against Iran “economic war.” Under his declared “maximum pressure” campaign, Trump has introduced the harshest ever sanctions in history against Iran. Iran says that sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran will prevent it from providing medicine to its citizens. - Tehran Times, Iran Daily