Washington: The fresh sanctions on Iran are not targeted against its people, the United States has said, observing the current economic strain being faced by them is a result of mismanagement of the present regime.
However, the doors for negotiations are still open, if the Iranian regime changes its behavior and meets the expectations of the international community, a senior US official told reporters.
"We saw those reports today, that everything from shoes and clothing to foreign-imported wallpaper, the Iranian regime is now trying to restrict in terms of the way their citizens use their foreign exchange," State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said.
"Again, from our perspective, this just speaks to the extreme economic mismanagement, the extreme political mismanagement of the Iranian regime and the fact that the Iranian people are now feeling the full effects of the bad decision that their government has made," she said.
"These sanctions are designed to continue to pressure the regime to make another choice. And from our perspective, the onus remains on the regime. The door is open, the table is set; they have to just make better choices if they truly care about their people," she said in response to a question.
Nuland said the current economic condition in the country is a function of both their own internal mismanagement, but also the fact that the sanctions are biting into their ability to export, other countries` willingness to trade with them.
So it`s obviously having an economic impact, but so is their own internal mismanagement, she noted.
"Under the US sanctions policy, international sanctions policy we grant exceptions for medicine and for foodstuffs, and the United States still exports foodstuffs and medicine to Iran, and we don`t preclude or ask anybody else to stop those kinds of imports. So we are not looking to hurt the Iranian people," she said.
"We have said all the way along: We do not have any beef with the Iranian people. We do have serious concerns about the choices that their government has made, and the Iranian people have to understand that the choices their government has made have consequences. In this case, they`re seeing it in the decision by the government not to allow them to import foreign shoes and clothes and wallpaper," Nuland said.
PTI
