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New US bans on Iran pre-election publicity stunt: Businessman

A businessman says bans targeting 18 Iranian banks are mere publicity stunt before US elections.

New US sanctions targeting the Iranian financial institutions would have no tangible impact on the current state of trade between Iran and the rest of the world, says a major businessman who believes the bans are a mere publicity stunt by the current administrative government in Washington that seeks to get re-elected in elections planned for early next month.

“The banking sanctions in these circumstances is a publicity stunt for a group that could lose the upcoming election,” said Sharif Nezam Mafi, the chairman of Iran-Switzerland Joint Chamber of Commerce.

“(they) are meant to create problems in the activity of the next (US) government to remove (sanctions) or normalize Iran-US relations,” Nezam Mafi told the official IRNA news agency.

The comments come a day after the US government expanded its secondary sanctions to cover 18 Iranian banks, some of them private institutions that have minimum interaction with the Iranian government.

Iranian authorities have dismissed the new bans, saying financial institutions around the world have already decided to preserve their ties with the 18 Iranian banks regardless of the impacts of US secondary sanctions which affect American or non-American entities that have interests in the United States.

Nezam Mafi said a special trade mechanism set up by Switzerland to facilitate humanitarian exchanges with Iran would continue to function regardless of the new US sanctions.

“New sanctions on 18 banks would not impact the humanitarian trade with Switzerland,” he said, adding that the channel, known as the SHTA, has been primarily designed to neutralize the impact of sanctions on Iran’s basic needs like medicine.

The businessman said Iran has taken delivery of three major cargoes of medicines from Switzerland through the SHTA in the calendar month ending late August.


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