Iran slams Trump’s 'hypocritical, repulsive' virus aid offer amid US ‘medical terrorism’

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has slammed a recent US president Donald Trump’s offer to “assist” Iran in countering the coronavirus outbreak as a repulsive display of hypocrisy amid Washington’s sanctions and medical terrorism targeting Iran.

News ID: 449581

Date: 13 March 2020 - 13:12

RNA - “Instead of hypocritical displays of compassion and repulsive bragging, you should end your economic and medical terrorism so that medicine and medical supplies can reach medical staff and the Iranian people,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Seyyed Abbas Mousavi said in a tweet on Friday.

On Thursday, Trump said that Iran is “facing a tremendous problem” and that US has offered to help Iran.

“We have the greatest doctors in the world,” he added.

Reacting to Trump’s remarks, Mousavi said on Friday that Iran enjoys having “the best, bravest and most component medical staff in the world”.

“We do not need American doctors,” Mousavi noted, adding that Washington should care for its own people amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Mousavi’s remarks come as many in the US have voiced concern over Trump’s handling of the outbreak in the country.

The novel coronavirus, COVID-19, is a new respiratory disease first identified in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year. The World Health Organization on Wednesday described the outbreak as a pandemic.

According to the latest statistics released by Iran’s Health Ministry, a total number of 10,075 Iranians have been infected with the disease, 429 of which have lost their lives.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has said Washington’s unilateral sanctions against Tehran have caused “serious impediments” in Iran’s response to the outbreak.

In a letter to the United Nations Secretary General, Zarif urged lifting of the US unilateral and illegal sanctions, which have greatly hampered the Islamic Republic’s fight against the coronavirus.

Iran's Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the UN office in Geneva, Esmaeil Baqaei Hamaneh has also slammed the US sanctions as the main factor targeting the country’s health sector’s capabilities, urging the UN Human Rights Council (UNHCR) not to ignore this grave problem.

The US has imposed a series of wide sweeping sanctions targeting varying sectors of the Iranian economy ever since it withdrew from the Iran 2015 nuclear agreement in May 2018.

The bans deny Iran of vital medical aid despite an October 2018 ruling by the International Court of Justice rejecting US sanctions on humanitarian supplies.

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