Iran must boost non-oil revenues & oil sales to counter US sanctions ‘plot’ – Rouhani
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has called for resistance against US restrictions on its energy sector by boosting production and exports, as Washington tightens its sanctions grip on Tehran.
“America is trying to decrease our foreign reserves... We have to increase our foreign exchange earnings and cut our currency expenditures,” the Iranian leader stated on Saturday as cited by the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).
Rouhani said Iran has managed to reduce some imports and become self-sufficient with products and commodities, like wheat gasoline, and now can export them. Last year, the country’s non-oil exports stood at $43 billion, according to the president.
Also on rt.com OPEC ‘likely to collapse’ thanks to some members’ unilateralism – Iran’s oil minister“We should increase production and raise our (non-oil) exports and resist America’s plots against the sale of our oil,” he added.
The statement came shortly after the US announced sanctions against Iran’s nuclear power plant at Bushehr and a ban on exports of heavy water and any further uranium enrichment.
In April, the Trump administration said it would not renew exemptions granted last year to buyers of Iranian oil in line with its plan to bring the Islamic Republic’s crude exports to zero. Tehran said the mission will fail, with its oil minister stating that Washington made “a bad mistake by politicizing oil and using it as a weapon in the fragile state of the market.”
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