Is the United States afraid of lifting the arms embargo on Iran?
October 21st, 2020 at 4:25 pm
Is the United States afraid of lifting the arms embargo on Iran?

by Omer Selim Sher in Ottawa;

With the lifting of the arms embargo on the Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran now has great potential to export arms to the international market. That is why the United States is very scared. Iran is likely to export far more weapons than it buys from the international market.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh made the remarks at a news conference in Tehran on Monday. He said 90 percent of the weapons and equipment needed by Iran’s military are domestically made in its own technology. “What they (the Americans) are afraid of is Iran’s comeback to the expansive armaments’ technology and export market,” he added.

Now that the arms embargo on Iran has been lifted, the United States fears that Iran will export weapons to the international market and that Iran’s military technology will spread to the international arena. Khatibzada called the lifting of the arms embargo on Iran a great victory for Tehran.

An Iranian diplomat told a news conference that before the nuclear deal was signed in 2015, that Iranian negotiators tried to raise the issue of lifting the arms embargo, but were blocked by the United States and its allies. But at one point in the discussion, the issue of lifting sanctions on Iran was added, and in light of that, the 13-year arms embargo on Iran was lifted on October 18. But the United States has long tried to keep the ban in place.

For Iran, it does not matter who would win the US elections. “We’ll wait until the Americans admit to their political defeats themselves,” Khatibzadeh said, calling the Iranians a “patient and strategically calculating” nation that would align its actions with the requirements of the day.

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Omer Sher is a retired Professor of Economics at Algonquin College, Ottawa, Canada and a researcher on politics in South Asia.