Iran demands trillion dollars from US

Washington should have to pay for the damage caused by decades of unilateral sanctions, a senior official has said

The US owes Iran a trillion dollars for the decades of economic sanctions, a senior official in Tehran has said, while accusing Washington of supporting terrorism.

In a speech on Saturday, Ali Shamkhani, who serves as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, accused the US-led West – which he called the “Arrogant Front” – of trying “to use different tricks in the form of their own hybrid war” to undermine the country.

The official claimed that “the Americans themselves openly admit that they formed [the terrorist groups] ISIS and Al-Qaeda” in a bid to create a rift between Iran and its neighbors, as well as to protect its ally and Tehran’s arch foe, Israel.

Shamkhani went on to denounce US sanctions against Iran, which were first introduced after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. “Americans should pay a trillion dollars in damages to Iran because they held back our country for 25 years,” he said.

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Over the decades since the Islamic Revolution, the US has imposed several rounds of economic sanctions on Iran while designating it a “state sponsor of terrorism.” The only notable rapprochement between the countries took place in 2015, when Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for partial sanctions relief. In 2018, however, the administration of Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the agreement, reimposing sanctions targeting Iran’s oil industry and finances.

In 2021, former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif claimed that US sanctions had inflicted $1 trillion worth of damage on Iran’s economy while demanding compensation from Washington as a prerequisite for a return to the nuclear deal.

Shamkhani’s comments come after an Iranian court ruled in December 2023 that the US government, including the US Department of Defense, President-elect Donald Trump, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the National Security Agency, and CIA, should pay nearly $50 billion in damages for the 2020 assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force, as well as issue a public apology to the more than 3,000 Iranian citizens who filed the lawsuit.