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world powers including the US the sanction was rescinded.
Since US President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the nuclear deal in May, nearly all Iranian products including tribal rugs, caviar and pistachios have again beem placed on the blacklist of Washington’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
“Handmade carpets belong to the Iranian nation and the US President Donald Trump has made a mistake to sanction this Iranian art which is a symbol of the culture and intellectual property of the Iranian people”, Fereshteh Dastpak, director of the National Carpet Centre of Iran said.
Iran is already pursuing a much wider claim against the US at the ICJ, otherwise known as the World Court, based at The Hague. The country on July 17 filed a lawsuit against the US at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the reimposition of heavy sanctions against Tehran by the Trump administration, claiming the move violates the little-known Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations and Consular Rights , signed as far back as 1955 by the two countries.
Iran exports its hand-made rugs to 81 markets worldwide according to official data and in recent years the US has accounted for around one-third of the exports. In the 2016-17 Persian year, some $90mn worth of Persian rugs were sold to the US alone.
2.6 Turkey informs US it is not obliged to cooperate with Iran sanctions
Turkey has informed American officials that it opposes US sanctions on Iran and is under no obligation to implement them, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on July 25.
“We do not have to adhere to the sanctions imposed on a country by another country. We don’t find the sanctions right either,” Cavusoglu said at a news conference in Azerbaijan.
“We held meetings with the United States in Ankara and told them openly: Turkey gets oil and gas from Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia and Iraq. If I don’t buy from Iran now, where am I supposed to meet that need from?” Cavusoglu said.
In another pushback against Donald Trump’s plan to force Iran into renegotiating its role in Middle East affairs by subjecting the country to unprecedented heavy sanctions— not to mention a Twitter bombardment , described on July 24 by Iran’s parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani as “the words of a troublemaker” and an example of how “the United States is experiencing disorder and wildness in its diplomatic relations”—Iran’s foreign ministry on July 25 said that the Islamic Republic would react with equal countermeasures if Washington tries to block its worldwide oil exports, as it plans to do according to a November deadline .
Iran’s Armed Forces Chief of Staff Major General Mohammad Bagheri had already weighed into the row on July 24 saying that Iran wants peace but will defend its interests in the Gulf. In a clear reference to Iran’s suggestion that as a counter-measure it might block energy exports from the Gulf by stopping
9 IRAN Country Report August 2018 www.intellinews.com