During years of sanctions, Iran’s financial market, as one of the main infrastructures of the country, was under unfair attacks, says Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Zarif made the remarks on Saturday in the 4th Banking and Buisness Forum Iran Europe.

“The architects of sanctions began a special operation to paralyze Iran’s financial market,” Zarif said.

“They were after restricting and disabling inter-banking relations and create disruptions in transactions between Iranian and foreign banks as well as cutting the country’s financial resources both in short and long terms,” he said.

“And they rather succeeded to do so,” Iran’s top diplomat said.

The countries which put Iran under sanctions, among other things, made every effort to deny Iran access to financial resources and aids by international institutions as well as imposing massive cost of services provided by foreign financial entities to trigger internal financial imbalances, fuel inflation, increase the prices of foreign currencies and to curb production in the country, Zarif said.

The Foreign Minister then went on to refer to the confiscation of Iran’s assets by foreign countries during the years of sanctions.

“Around two billion dollars of the country’s assets and another 1.5 billion dollars of resources belonged to Iran’s Central Bank were plundered as a result of mismanagement by former governments,” he said.

News ID 188335