Mehdi Hasan Asks Why US Still Sanctioning Iran as Covid Cases Surge

MSNBC anchor Mehdi Hasan asked why the United States continues to sanction Iran despite a surge in coronavirus cases in the country.

As of Sunday, the seven-day average of coronavirus cases in Iran is 24,024, according to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering.

During The Mehdi Hasan Show on Sunday the host asked U.S. Special Representative for Iran Robert Malley about “the humanitarian situation in Iran.”

“Coronavirus cases are surging. The country is crippled by those economic sanctions from the U.S., many of them from [former President Donald] Trump. President [Joe] Biden talked extensively, I remember, even during the campaign, about humanitarian exemptions, a pause on sanctions,” continued Hasan. “Where is all of that? If you’re an Iranian sitting in Tehran this evening, Rob, struggling to put food on the table for your family, would you think President Biden has done enough to help during this pandemic?”

Hasan omitted that there are humanitarian exemptions for U.S. sanctions on Iran. The regime has refused coronavirus assistance from the United States. Malley acknowledged the exemptions but dismissed them as ineffective.

Malley replied, “Well, my first blame, my government first, but I’ll let the Iranian people decide that.”

“I think what President Biden said, and you’re right, he said it during the campaign and he said it since,” he continued. “That we inherited a sanctions architecture that he’s asked his team to review to make sure that the humanitarian exemptions can be effective. The administration issued a general license to allow Iran to more easily import all that it needs to combat Covid.”

However, said Malley, the exemptions won’t “make the real difference.”

“What will make the real difference is if the sanctions are lifted because they’re so multilayered and that’s what we’ve prepared to do if Iran is prepared to do if they will do what they said they would do which is a mutual return to compliance,” he continued.

Since April, there have been six rounds of talks in Vienna between the United States and the parties to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, colloquially known as the Iran nuclear deal, to get the United States and Iran back into that agreement, which the former withdrew from in 2018, reimposing sanctions in addition to enacting new ones as part of what the Trump administration called “maximum pressure” on Iran.

The United States and Iran are meeting indirectly with European intermediaries shuttling between the two parties. On the campaign trail, Biden pledged that the United States would re-enter the nuclear deal if Iran returned to compliance.

Malley stated that the United States is prepared to lift not only the sanctions lifted and then reimposed under the 2015 deal but also the sanctions that Trump enacted.

“We’re prepared to go much further and lift the sanctions that were imposed in violation of the deal, but Iran has to do its part,” said Malley. “And what is troubling is that at this point, it is still not said it’s prepared to do what it needs to do and it’s asking us to do more than the deal requires.”

Watch above via MSNBC.