Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said on Monday that what he described as the “inhuman sanctions” imposed by the European Union on Iran have nothing to do with human rights, stating that they “trample” the basic rights of Iran’s citizens.
In a post on X, Baghaei was responding to remarks by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who said, “It is too early to lift sanctions” on Iran.
He said: “EU’s inhuman sanctions on Iran were never about ‘human rights’ — they were designed to trample the basic rights of ordinary Iranians. No one is buying this tired moral theatre.”
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He added that this “only further demonstrates Europe’s ruling class’s double-standard & hypocrisy, and hastens Europe’s embarrassing descent into irrelevance.”
Von der Leyen had said during a workshop for Christian Democratic Union’s parties in Berlin that it was still too early to lift sanctions on Iran, pointing to what she described as important reasons behind the measures.
She said that one of the main reasons for the sanctions relates to “the suppression of human rights, particularly, women’s rights” and that lifting them would require a “fundamental change” in the country.
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