Tasnim – Iran’s UN mission spokesman Alireza Miryousefi said the opening of a humanitarian channel to bring food and medicine to Iran was evidence of “false claims” that medicine and food were exempt from Washington’s illegal sanctions.

This is the best evidence that the longstanding & false US claims that medicine & food are exempt from its illegal unilateral sanctions. If they were, as the US always stated in response to Iran's complaints, "exempt", then why require this special channel,” Miryousefi tweeted on Friday.

“Therefore, paying lip service is not enough, we need to see concrete action than mere words. Regardless, the US' economic terrorism against the Iranian people does not end with this one decision, because US is not a trustworthy party,” he added.

According to a statement by the Swiss government on Thursday, the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement (SHTA) seeks to ensure that Swiss-based exporters and trading companies in the food, pharmaceutical and medical sectors have a secure payment channel with a Swiss bank through which payments for their exports to Iran are guaranteed.

According to Reuters, three shipments of cancer and transplant drugs have been sent to Iran through this channel and the transaction has been processed.

Abdolnaser Hemmati, governor of Iran’s Central Bank, said late on Thursday that if Americans were sincere about supplying medicine, they must provide a banking mechanism. "Providing a Resources Transfer Mechanism and financing it is an important criterion for assessing the validity of their (US) claim."

The Swiss channel may even outpace the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX), a long-overdue mechanism the E3 (France, Britain, and Germany) intended to launch to facilitate trade with Tehran despite the US sanctions.

The launching of INSTEX was a small part of Europe’s commitment to compensate for the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was supposed to end anti-Iran sanctions in return for certain curbs in the country’s peaceful nuclear program.