Russian diplomat rejects West’s human rights claims

In an exclusive interview with IRNA on Tuesday, he termed Iran-Russia relations as growing and said leaders of both countries have followed a proper and positive route to advance cooperation in political, economic, cultural, commercial and tourism areas.

He said the volume of trade exchanges between the two countries up to May, 2016 stood at 855 million dollars.

According to the ambassador, Iran and Russia have already signed document on facilitating visa services for both businessmen and students.

He also believed that Iranian media and press should distinguish between those countries which have proved faithful to their commitments in implementing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) when talking about the “failure of other parties in fulfilling their commitments”.

He said the Iranian media and press have to particularly name those member states of the 5+1 which have failed to fulfill their JCPOA commitments.

He said his country was aware of the reasons of Iran’s dissatisfaction with implementation process of the JCPOA which is mainly due to refusal of big world banks to come to Iran.

He said the other parties were expected to comply with their commitments but regretfully refused to do so.

Highlighting Russia’s significant role in the nuclear talks, Jagarian said Moscow backed Iran's views and always told Americans during meetings that they should act like Iran and comply with their commitments.

He also commented on Iran’s missile program and said Tehran’s missile tests were no violation of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231.

The Russian ambassador said Iran’s missile tests were not against the JCPOA as the missiles which were tested lacked the power to carry nuclear arms.

He said Resolution 2231 never made any mentions of banning such tests.

Touching on the criticisms levelled at the Islamic Republic of Iran by western countries especially the US about Iran’s human rights records, the ambassador
said western countries and the US in particular kept voicing their criticism about missile tests, terrorism issue and human rights while it is Washington that deserves most criticism about its human rights situation.

He referred to the case of Guantanamo Bay detention center, the human rights breaches in Iraqi prisons and killing of defenseless people in Afghanistan as the human rights violations in America.

Let’s look what is happening in the US and see how the American police are killing black people which is a vivid case of human rights violation, he said.

He also rejected the US claim that its military bases serve the purpose of confronting Iran threats.

He said he really wished to present a world map as a gift to those who make such claims as they seem to have been truly weak at their geography lessons at school.

The Russian ambassador also commented on a number of other issues such as Iran’s heavy water selling, cultural interactions and tourism between the two nations.

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