TEHRAN, Feb 13: Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Thursday that US sanctions were depriving his people of basic necessities, vowing his government would find a way to overcome the country's challenges.
"Why are you blocking the people's access to food, water, and medicine?" Pezeshkian said of the sanctions during a visit to the southern Bushehr province.
"They cannot block our path, we will find a way," he added in remarks broadcast on state TV.
US President Donald Trump, who returned to the White House on January 20, has reinstated his "maximum pressure" policy towards Iran over concerns the country is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran has consistently denied it is seeking an atomic bomb.
His administration announced new sanctions earlier this month targeting a network accused of shipping Iranian oil to China after Trump ordered the government to adopt a campaign "to drive Iran's export of oil to zero" and to "modify or rescind sanctions waivers".
Trump has also recently called for striking a deal with Iran, suggesting in a Monday interview that stopping it from developing nuclear weapons could be achieved either "with bombs" or with an agreement.
"I'd love to make a deal with them without bombing them," he told Fox News.
But Pezeshkian brushed off those remarks, saying "they do not want to talk to us, they want us to be humiliated... and we won't be".
"We are able to solve many of our own problems by relying on our own strengths," he added. —AFP
