TEHRAN (Iran News) – Iran unveiled its first home-grown subway car on Thursday during a ceremony in the capital city of Tehran attended by President Hassan Rouhani through video-conferencing.
In the unveiling ceremony, some Iranian officials including Tehran Provincial Governor Anoshirvan Mohseni Bandpey were taking part and the first home-made subway car was inaugurated by President Hassan Rouhani through video-conferencing.
According to a report by the Iranian authorities, the completion of the project to produce the metro carriages inside the country took 18 months and during this period, the share of the Iranian companies in the know-how knowledge of designing and producing the metro carriages rose from the 25-30% to 85%.
Despite being under foreign sanctions, the Iranian experts have been able to domestically produce previously imported equipment and goods in a bid to neutralize the impact of the sanctions in line with the guidelines of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Khamenei in accordance with his Resistant Economy doctrine.
In the inaugural ceremony, President Rouhani said the United States blocked Iran’s access to ten million doses of a coronavirus vaccine by pressuring the companies involved in the transferring of the vaccines to Iran.
“We have done what we should have done. We bought vaccines from India and we paid for it, but then they said ‘our Judiciary has gotten in the way and we cannot give you the vaccines,’” Rouhani said during a video conference call on Thursday during a ceremony to inaugurate five national knowledge-based and innovative projects.
Pointing to the unprecedented U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Republic, Rouhani said Tehran’s general impression was that no country would target another country’s access to basic needs such as food and medicine with sanctions, but the United States, under former president Donald Trump, proved Iran wrong.
He also explained that importing vaccines is not an easy job to do, stressing that “wherever there is a vaccine, we immediately provide money to purchase it.”
“I want to say that this is not a simple matter,” he said. “The administration, the Health Ministry and the Central Bank have taken all the necessary measures … and I stress that nothing comes before the issue of vaccines for us.”
The president noted that Iran has bought 16.8 million doses of vaccines via the World Health Organization’s COVAX global vaccine scheme, which is being gradually imported into the country.
Iran was among the front-runners in placing an early order to purchase vaccines, he said.
