Iran Celebs Launch Petition Against US Sanctions

Iranian celebrities including Oscar-winning film director Asghar Farhadi and Grammy winner Kayhan Kalhor have launched a petition condemning US sanctions on Tehran and warning of the impact on ordinary people.

"Once again, the United States has imposed sanctions against Iran... Every Iranian will personally pay the price," reads the petition, named "Voices Against Sanctions" and posted on change.org on Thursday.

A last tranche of US sanctions were reimposed on Monday following the decision by US President Donald Trump to pull out of the 2015 nuclear deal earlier this year.

"Politicians will come and go, but the fallout from their disastrous decisions will be a nightmare for generations to come," said the petition, which had picked up nearly 5,000 signatures by Friday. 

It was signed by Iranian filmmakers, musicians, activists and lawyers.

Farhadi has received two Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film, while musician Kalhor, a virtuoso on the kamancheh (spiked fiddle), won a Grammy in 2017.

Photo Credit: IRNA

Foreign Drugs Rare Commodity in Sanctions-Hit Iran

"Talk of sanctions on Iran reemerged, and my essential medicine was no longer available," said Masoud Mir who suffers from thalassaemia, a genetic blood disease common in Iran.

Mir, 36, is one of many patients in the Islamic Republic who not only have to deal with their disability, but also the consequences of trade sanctions reimposed in August by the US, as well as a battered economy with a free-falling currency, a foreign drug shortage and price hikes.

His essential medicine, a Swiss-made anti-iron overload drug, is now rationed by the government and can only be freely purchased at exorbitant prices on the black market.

The same is true for other crucial drugs for treating multiple sclerosis, cancer and cardiac problems and even simple anaesthetics required for surgery.

On Wednesday, the UN's top court stepped in, and ruled in favor of Iran which had called for the US sanctions to be suspended. 

Judges at the International Court of Justice in The Hague unanimously ruled Washington should remove barriers to "the free exportation to Iran of medicines and medical devices, food and agricultural commodities" as well as airplane parts.

Official Iranian statements acknowledge the shortage of medicines and say imports of certain drugs are no longer subsidized.

"We are currently short of 80 pharmaceutical items," Mohammad-Naeem Aminifard, a member of parliament's health commission, told semi-official news agency ISNA.

"The government and insurers have removed the support for foreign drugs that have a domestic equivalent which intensifies the pressure on patients."

Iran produces 96 percent of the drugs it uses, according to the Syndicate of Iranian Pharmaceutical Industries, but imports more than half the raw materials to make them.

The double-whammy of banking sanctions and a collapse in the value of its currency make total self-sufficiency difficult if not outright impossible.

Battered Economy Hits Patients

For others with family health concerns, sanctions are adding to their burden.

Ali, an electrical technician in his mid-30s, was fired from one job for spending too much time on hospital visits for his son.

His next company went bankrupt, and his current employer, a Dutch-Iranian firm, is stalled because they cannot import equipment and has stopped paying staff.

He spoke to AFP outside the busy 13 Aban pharmacy in central Tehran, where he had been hoping to buy a medicine for fungal infections caused by his son's cancer treatment.

"They're not giving me any because of insurance problems," he said. 

"They said even if they could it's less than I need due to rationing. My son could die if his medicine is delayed for even a day."

Managers at the pharmacy, a state-owned outlet focusing on rarer diseases, declined to comment.

But others in central Tehran said there was "a notable shortage" in some anticoagulants, beta-blockers or drugs to treat blood pressure problems.

"The local versions are cheaper, but not as effective," one pharmacist told AFP. "Things will get worse if sanctions continue."

Many patients cannot afford black market prices and risk side effects from locally-made equivalents, the head of Iran's thalassaemia society, Meysam Ramezani, told the conservative Tasnim news agency recently.

Seven thalassaemia patients died in March alone, he said, blaming "either a lack of injections or low-quality drugs."

Who's to Blame?

Iranians on social media are blaming many people: the US for its crippling sanctions, government economic mismanagement, and pharma firms for skyrocketing prices.

Surgeon Hamidreza Vafayi said the refusal of international banks to work with Iran was the biggest challenge.

The United States pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions targeting key parts of Iran's economy including international banking ties and transactions in US dollars.

"As far as I know, there is no official statement on sanctioning medicine trade with Iran," Vafayi told AFP.

"Yet when we cannot have banking ties (with the world) we are in fact under an undeclared medicine sanction regime. The truth is that no company would sell us drugs now."

Thalassaemia patient Masoud Mir also angrily recalled that when sanctions were imposed between 2010 and 2016, pharmaceutical firms exploited the situation by hoarding goods and manipulating prices. The same thing is happening today, he claimed.

Medicine importers get subsidised currency rates from the government, but their names are not publicly available, making it difficult to hold them to account if drugs do not appear in state-owned pharmacies.  

"In 2011, they kept saying that there was none (of his drug) in the market because of sanctions. But I could just walk out of the pharmacy and buy some from a street dealer at crazy prices," he said.

"Not everyone can pay that, so they may face a slow death."

Photo Credit: IRNA

US Must Lift 'Humanitarian' Sanctions on Iran: UN court

Editor’s Note: The full text of the order of the International Court of Justice can be seen here.

The UN's top court Wednesday ordered the United States to lift sanctions on "humanitarian" goods to Iran that President Donald Trump reimposed after pulling out of Tehran's nuclear deal.

The International Court of Justice unanimously ruled that Washington "shall remove by means of its choosing any impediments arising from the measures announced on May 8 to the free exportation to Iran of medicines and medical devices, food and agricultural commodities" as well as airplane parts, said judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf.

The court said sanctions on goods "required for humanitarian needs... may have a serious detrimental impact on the health and lives of individuals on the territory of Iran."

US sanctions on aircraft spare parts also had the "potential to endanger civil aviation safety in Iran and the lives of its users.”

Trump slapped a first round of sanctions on Iran in August after pulling out in May of a historic deal aimed at curbing Tehran's nuclear ambitions, to the dismay of his European allies. A second round of punitive measures is due in November.

The ICJ rules on disputes between United Nations member states. Its decisions are binding and cannot be appealed, but it has no mechanism to enforce them.

Photo Credit: ICJ