New Iran Sanctions Praised

Prime Minister’s Office spokesman Mark Regev spoke with Bridges for Peace and said that the sanctions send “a clear message to Iran that it should abide by the demands of the international community. Iran must pay a price for continuing to move ahead on its dangerous and reckless nuclear policies.” Israel has been calling for sanctions on Iran’s gas and oil industries for a while. Said Regev, “These sanctions are good sanctions; they are ratcheting up the pressure on the Iranian regime to abandon its nuclear program. I think if Iran continues to thumb its nose at the international community, to aggressively pursue nuclear weapons, then…we have to continue to ratchet up the pressure on that regime.”

Andrei Nesterenko en.wikipedia.org

Not everyone was pleased, however. Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said, “We have repeatedly said that, in our view, the practice of using unilateral or collective sanctions on Iran that go beyond the UN Security Council sanctions regime against the country is unacceptable. For this not only undermines our joint efforts to seek a political and diplomatic settlement of the situation around the Iranian nuclear program, but also shows disregard for the carefully negotiated and coordinated provisions of the relevant UN Security Council resolutions.” He also spoke out against the EU and US from enforcing their own “domestic” sanctions requirements on third countries.