Russia strongly opposed to new US sanctions on Iran

Moscow lambasted the United States for imposing new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, calling again for talks to resolve the stand-off. The Russian Foreign Minsiter Sergei Lavrov voiced Moscow's opposition to US senators’ latest call for additional sanctions against Iran. "I think these ideas contradict the fundamental interests of the international community, the interests of ensuring a regime of non-proliferation," the Russian foreign minister said. After the US House approved the new sanctions bill, Iran blasted Washington, and stressed that such boycotts undermine efforts to settle Tehran's nuclear standoff with the West. “The policy of imposing sanctions is a failed policy and under the present circumstances, it will only make resolving existing problems particularly in the nuclear issue, more difficult and complicated,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Araqchi said late in July. He described the move by American senators as a clear indication of the prevalence of the unilateralism theory as a symbol of neo-conservatism in the US. Washington and its western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry. Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West's calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment. Tehran has dismissed West's demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians' national resolve to continue the path. The Islamic Republic says that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.