Iran demands lifting of oppressive sanctions

Iran's foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said Tuesday that the sanctions against Iran are "oppressive" and should be lifted.

"We have announced that these sanctions are oppressive and we reject them," Xinhua quoted Afkham as saying in her weekly press conference while reacting to the recent moves in the US Congress to adopt new sanctions against Iran.

According to the interim agreement reached in Geneva Nov 24, the comprehensive deal would encompass removal of all sanctions, including multilateral, unilateral and the UN Security Council sanctions against Iran, she said.

"Based on the negotiations and according to the Joint Plan of Action, the sanctions should have begun to split and break up, from our perspective," she added.

The foreign ministry spokeswoman noted that the recent remarks by a number of US Congressmen about the imposition of new sanctions against Iran are aimed at "creating psychological atmosphere".

"We hope in the course (of implementing the interim deal) and in the final stage, the issue of sanctions would be solved," she said, adding that "for this reason, the Iranian negotiating team is working for the removal of all the sanctions, securing peaceful nuclear programme and enrichment activity (for the country) in the final deal".

Under the Geneva deal, the US and its allies will afford Iran with limited relief of sanctions on its oil, gold, petrochemicals, auto industries and civil aviation sectors with an estimated value of about $7 billion under the terms of the six-month nuclear deal.

In exchange, Iran agreed to halt enrichment above 5 percent and neutralising its stockpile of near 20 percent uranium by means of dilution or conversion

The document says Iran also agreed not to make advances of its activities at Natanz and Fordow enrichment plants and at the Arak reactor.

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif said earlier that the Geneva nuclear deal would be dead if the US Congress passed new sanctions against Iran, even if they did not take effect for six months.