Abdolnasser Hemmati: Iran has passed the peak of US sanctions, oil exports are growing

The governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) said the country's oil exports are actually growing despite US attempts to reduce them to zero.

Iran Press/Iran news: “I said it before and I’ll say it again, they [US] have done all they could [against Iran]. We have climbed past the peak of sanctions. Our oil exports are on the rise,” said the Governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) Abdolnasser Hemmati.

His remarks on Wednesday were in reaction to the new US sanctions, targeting the country’s topmost authorities, including the office of Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, Iran's foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and senior commanders of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), including the head of the elite IRGC Quds Force, Major General Ghassem Soleimani.

According to a Mehr News Agency report, Hemmati touched upon the EU’s trade mechanism for Iran, saying “It’s been a while since EU claimed it is on the brink of making INSTEX operational. We haven’t seen anything in practice, though. They have held meetings with us and some documents have been exchanged, but as long as no resources are transferred via INSTEX, the mechanism is of no use to us."

The Foreign Ministry spokesman Seyyed Abbas Mousavi in his weekly press conference on Monday expressed Iran's concerns about continued European foot dragging when he said: "Islamic Republic of Iran from day one hasn't waited for EU to form INSTEX and with some friendly countries like Russia we are working on some two-way trade mechanisms [between Tehran and Moscow]. 104/211/215

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INSTEX, far away from being operational: Iranian Parliament Speaker