Staff Reporter :
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said that the countries must be free to choose their trading partners to avail a number of alternative trading mechanisms.
The minister urged the Bangladesh government not to bow to the US financial system to carry on trading with Iran ignoring Washington’s sanctions.
“In the process, the US is hurting those countries by preventing them from trading with an important partner, particularly in the petrochemicals market,” Zarif said, during a brief interaction with journalists in a city hotel on Wednesday.
Dr Zarif cited the example of India, saying they used to pay upto “30 percent more” on the international market to meet their petrochemical needs, when they cannot buy from Iran.
The impact of the economic sanctions on Iran that Zarif referred to throughout as “economic terrorism” was being felt “directly” in a number of economies around the world as they target ordinary citizens, he said.
Zarif was upbeat on the potential to increase bilateral trade that currently languishes around just $160 million.
To make it work, Iran could operate a bank account in Dhaka to trade using Bangladeshi Taka as a medium while Bangladesh could operate an account to trade using Iranian Rial in Tehran, an Iranian diplomat has said in the past. Iran has been engaged in barter trade with India and Russia.
Zarif seemed to suggest as long as the political will was there, the ways can be found in cooperation with Tehran. “We are the experts at sanctions-busting,” he claimed.
