Iran Press/ Iran News: Shah Mahmood Qureshi told Jean-Yves Le Drian on Tuesday that due to the ongoing economic sanctions, Iran is facing serious problems in fighting coronavirus.
"Iran's economic sanctions must be lifted immediately so that Tehran can effectively access its resources against the coronavirus," Qureshi underscored.
The French Foreign Minister, for his part, said that coronavirus is a global problem and countering it needs joint cooperation.
He said that lifting Iran's sanctions and the livelihoods problems of developing countries will be addressed at the G20 summit.
During the recent days, the Pakistani foreign minister talked with his counterparts in Iran and Germany as well as some member states of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) over the outbreak of the coronavirus and US sanctions against Iran, which have troubled the country to deal with the virus.
Ever since quitting the multilateral 2015 nuclear deal with Iran in May 2018, US President Donald Trump has been running what he refers to as a “maximum pressure” of sanctions against Tehran.
The American sanctions target both Iran and its international partners, including European countries that seek to engage in trade with the Islamic Republic.
So-called secondary sanctions target foreign companies that do business with Iran. Affected countries, including China, say those bans violate their sovereignty because their bilateral interactions with Iran are targeted by a third country, namely the US.
The new respiratory virus, known officially as COVID-19, has spread to every continent except Antarctica as well as every single European country.
More than 17,100 people have died from COVID-19 globally. An estimated 103,000 of the 392,000 people who have been diagnosed with the disease across the world have recovered, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.
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