Mohammad Javad Zarif, foreign minister of the Islamic Republic, said that the United States’ sanctions against Iran have “little chance” of achieving their goals and that the effect of these sanctions will be mostly psychological.

According to IRNA, Zarif who had just arrived in Istanbul to meet with the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Turkey, told the reporters that there is little chance that the United States will achieve its economic goals through sanctions, and “no chance” to achieve their political goals. He added that the effects of the sanctions will be mostly psychological. He claimed that we have already witnessed the economic effects of the sanctions and there won’t be anything more but the psychological effect which started since the day “Trump decided to exit JCPOA”.

He also talked about the mechanism that the EU will put in place in order to go around the sanction, which he said might take more time to establish due to pressures from the United States.

The new round of sanctions on November 4th will include Iran’s oil and gas; the United States aims to bring down Iran’s oil export to zero.

On November 4th, 1979, Khomeinist students occupied the American embassy and took all the employees as hostages for 444 days. The Islamic Republic celebrates the day of hostage-taking as the Students Day.