The U.S. State Department announced today that it was upping Washington’s “maximum pressure campaign” on the Iranian government, to try to force the government to first heel, and then come to the negotiating table with the U.S. on the issue of nuclear weapons. The Iranian government in early February declined to negotiate with a gun to its head, and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned: “smart people ought to choose ‘maximum wisdom’ instead” of maximum pressure.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, a smart diplomat for sure, was in Tehran yesterday, and he told a news conference following talks with his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi that “We expect the intergovernmental agreement on free trade between members of the Eurasian Economic Union and Iran to take force in the near future. This will surely drive up trade turnover throughout our space with Iranian neighbors,” the minister said.
“Despite the well-known illegal sanctions restrictions, our trade demonstrates positive dynamics. Last year trade turnover grew by more than 13%. There is every reason to suppose that this trend will persist,” Lavrov said. “We underscored the inadmissibility of unilateral economic sanctions. In this vein, we will continue substantive and focused efforts to mitigate the adverse effects of these unlawful restrictions on the economies of Russia and Iran.”
