TEHRAN (Iran News) – Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned on Sunday that companies which accompany the U.S. in its “maximum pressure” policy against Iran and leave the Iranian market will face difficulty to return to the country in the future.
“The companies which left Iran have lost a market that cannot retake easily,” ISNA quoted Araghchi as saying on Sunday.
He added that Iran will not forget the countries’ behavior in difficult times.
Samsung and its fellow South Korean company LG Electronics – for which Iran has been a key market in the Middle East – reportedly pulled down their last advertisement banners in Iran on Friday.
The two companies had cut their trade relations with Tehran in the past months, submitting to U.S. sanctions imposed on Iran after Washington withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi tweeted on Friday, “Some foreign companies, which have left Iran in recent years and months submitting to the U.S. bullying, should know that returning to the Iranian market will be very difficult.”
According to trade principles, keeping one’s foothold in a country’s market is harder than entering it, he said.
In his post, Mousavi also attached a photo of workers removing a banner of the South Korean company Samsung in Iran.
U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the multilateral 2015 nuclear deal in May 2018 and introduced the harshest ever sanctions against Iran under his officially stated “maximum pressure” strategy.
- source : tehrantimes, irannews
