Iran fully prepared to overcome any scenario, says economy minister

TEHRAN (Iran News)  Iran’s Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Abdolnaser Hemmati says his country has prepared various scenarios to overcome future challenges.

Hemmati made the remarks during an interview with Saudi Arabia’s Al-Sharq News Network late on Sunday.

While referring to the imposition of illegal sanctions and the so-called maximum pressure campaign during the previous term of U.S. President Donald Trump, the Iranian economy minister said that it was a bit natural the Islamic Republic implemented various methods to neutralize Washington’s cruel measures.

He emphasized that both positive economic growth and ever-growing cooperation with various countries in the region and the world have been the outcome of Iran’s measures.

So far in the current Iranian calendar year, which will end on March 20, “we have had an 18-percent growth in non-oil trade, and oil exports are also on a good trend”, Hemmati said, adding that Iran has been able to leave the main stage of pressure behind and will make more efforts in this regard in the future.

“In terms of exports, we have had the experience of 2018-2020, the period when Trump was in power, and our oil exports decreased sharply, and of course, the Corona factor [Covid-19 pandemic] was added to it, and Corona too increased the pressure on our economy,” the minister acknowledged, saying that these pressures somewhat affected people’s lives.

Hemmati however looked optimistic when he said that the Islamic Republic also came up with the necessary planning to mitigate the effect of the sanctions. “We have prepared various scenarios so that we can implement our own economic agenda, and we are prepared for any situation.”

He also touched on the resilience of emerging economies in the face of pressures and shocks, and said: “All countries today resort to a type of cooperation and coordination against unilateral U.S. pressure, and alliances such as BRICS and D8 are what we are trying to expand.”

Hemmati expressed readiness for closer cooperation with neighboring countries, saying that regional stability lies in good economic relations with each other.