Assassinations and sanctions, both seek to prevent Iran from progress

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Iran Press news agency, Ali Bagheri Kani said: "The experience of the past four decades has shown that the pressures have imposed costs on Iranian people, but It cannot stop people from progressing."

Ali Baqeri-Kani, head of the Iranian Judiciary's High Council for Human Rights, said that assassination and sanctions are two sides of the same coin against the Iranian people, which began during the Obama administration.

Baqeri-Kani referred to the martyrdom of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, head of the Research and Innovation Organization of the Ministry of Defense, adding that this crime is a continuation of Trump's policy of maximum pressure, constituting the crippling pressure of the Obama's era that was imposed on the Iranian nation.

The head of the Iranian Judiciary's High Council for Human Rights said that this policy has two prongs; one is the policy of sanctions imposed during the Obama's era and targeted various areas related to the basic needs of the Iranian people, and that American officials even extended it to the medical equipment and medicine.

He added: "Of course that Western governments have committed crimes in other areas as well. When Obama was in the office, five Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated."

Baqeri-Kani said: "Of course, the assassination of Martyr Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is exactly in the same direction, both assassination and sanctions to prevent the progress of the Iranian nation."

"Sanctions impose pressure on Iran, but Iran does not stop progressing, and these crimes increase national awareness," Baqeri-Kani noted.

The high ranking official urged the world to condemn the assassination of Martyr Mohsen Fakhrizadeh strongly and that these crimes should not go unanswered.

Baqeri Kani added that a rapporteur for the UN Human Rights Council prepared a report on the assassination of Martyr Soleimani and blamed the Americans, but unfortunately, he was forced to resign. Westerners behave in such a way that no dissenting voice is raised.

"We will correspond with UN officials and related institutions and ask them to condemn the assassination of Martyr Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, but the Westerners are acting in their own interests. For the past 12 years, the Zionists assassinated our nuclear scientists, and they did not condemn," the official added.

He said: "The actions of the Westerners, which are paving the ground for the assassination, should be costly for them."

"The silence of international authorities and the adoption of the double standard policy by international authorities means legitimizing terrorism," he said.

Baqeri Kani added that the assassination was a terrorist act. Still, the West is reluctant to condemn such an act, and legitimizing terrorism is no less a crime than terrorism, and this is a fact, and terrorism is one of the tools of the US foreign policy.