Rezaie: Sanctions caused $100bn damage to Iran's oil revenues

Masjed Soleiman, Khuzestan Prov., Jan 14, IRNA – Secretary of the Expediency Council Mohsen Rezaie said on Sunday that sanctions over the past three years caused 100 billion dollars damage to Iranian oil revenues. He made the remarks in a ceremony to sign documents for ceding the site of the Masjed Soleiman Petrochemical Facility to the Chinese contractor. Rezaie said that the sanctions prevented Iran to export 1,000 million barrels of crude oil over the past three years inflicting dlrs 100 billion damage. we have been facing two kinds of sanctions, the first of which relating to quantitative sanction of Iranian oil, based on which the crude exports lowered to one million barrels from more than two million barrels a day. As a result, he added, more than 1,000 barrels of Iranian crude oil were kept in wells and not exported. He added that the second chunk of sanctions, however, concerned the price which caused sharp price decline over recent months. The Iranian official noted that the US enforced the first sanctions through assistance of the UN Security Council and the second one with the help of Saudi Arabia and a number of other producers in the Persian Gulf. He commented that if price decline continues by next three years, 100 billion dollars more decrease will be observed in Iranian oil revenues. He lauded Iranian nation's resistance to pressures and said Iranian people stand up against the pressures just like what they endured during the revolution against despotism and the sacred defense against the Saddam Baathist Army invasion in 1980. A Social movement gained momentum in Iran demanding the government to take legal action with the International Court of Justice against the United States for orchestrating the sanctions and seek compensation from the US administration for the damages inflicted on Iran over the past three years over the fabricated nuclear dispute.