Tehran aims to sue US individuals over sanctions

Tehran is preparing a lawsuit in Iran against US individuals involved with economic sanctions imposed by Washington, President Hassan Rouhani says Monday.

Rouhani says the presidency’s legal affairs office as well as the justice and foreign ministers have been tasked with “drawing up a lawsuit against all those within America involved with designing and executing these sanctions.”

The case would be lodged in a “competent court inside Iran,” he says, quoted by state television.

Speaking after the last cabinet meeting of Iran’s calendar year which ends on March 20, Rouhani condemns the sanctions as a “crime against humanity” that was hitting ordinary Iranians.

“The world should know that what America has done was not against the Iranian state, it was not against Iran’s nuclear program, it was against the wellbeing of the Iranian people,” he says.

Rouhani says the sanctions targeted “the normal life of the people… the food supply… the medical supply of the people.”

— AFP