MNA | M.A. Saki: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his special representative for Iran Brian Hook have claimed that humanitarian supplies such as food and medicine are exempted from sanctions against Iran.

If it were so, there must not have been a shortage of medicine in Iran and some people should not have been worriedly going from one pharmacy to another to find medicine for their patients, especially those suffering from malicious diseases such as cancer.

It is clear that such remarks are nonsensical and deceitful.

While the Trump administration has imposed financial sanctions on Iran and threatened to punish banks that do business with the country, the channels for transferring money, even for buying medicine, are being blocked.

�When you want to transfer money, the bank does not ask whether it goes for food or other items � that is why sanctions always hit food and medicine,� Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told The Guardian on Monday.

The people in Iran are not convinced why sanctions have been returned. In fact, they are surprised. They say we signed a pact (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) with the US and other countries to end the sanctions. They ask what has happened that we are again facing a shortage of medicine and other commodities. They say if the Trump administration is not happy with Iranian officials why it creates problems for us.

They are even questioning the competence and efficiency of the United Nations, asking if the UN is not able to deter the return of sanctions then what its use is!

These cold-hearted sanctions are affecting the livelihood and health of the people. The only chance is that Iran itself is an important pharmaceutical manufacturer, otherwise the sanctions would have badly affected the medicinal market. Yet the country must be able to import some raw materials to produce pharmaceuticals.

In fact, Pompeo and John Bolton, another violent-minded person who acts as the national security advisor to Donald Trump, are working relentlessly to torture the Iranian nation, an absolute majority of whom do not care about politics and are mostly concerned about their daily lives.

There are reasons that certify these two men, among others, want to torture the Iranians: Pompeo told the BBC Persian on November 9 that Iranian officials must listen to Washington �if they want their people to eat�; Bolton, while in Singapore on November 13, also said, �It is our intention to squeeze them very hard. As the British say: �Squeeze them until the pips squeak�.�

So if the officials in Tehran do not want to surrender to Pompeo�s 12 humiliating demands declared on May 21, the Iranian people should be starved and some patients die due to shortage or lack of medicine.

However, in conducting his mission of torturing and punishing Iranians, Bolton seems to be more aggressive in conduct and more unguarded when it comes to revealing his mind about Iran.