Iran President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday that the country’s revenue has been reduced by 900 trillion rials (roughly equivalent to $214 billion) since the United States re-imposed sanctions on Iran in May 2018, maintaining that despite that loss, Iran is "still standing on its feet.”
Speaking at a weekly cabinet meeting on Wednesday President Rouhani praised the Iranian nation for "resisting and enduring hardships,” and said if it had not been for their resistance, "the enemy would have brought [the U.N. sanctions resolutions on Iran] back in the same year and brings it down to its knees.”
President Rouhani also said the United States wanted to lead Iran to the point of collapse. "Given the numbers they were right [to think so],” he said. “The enemy thought a nation cannot resist if it lost $50 billion of its revenues.”
"Those who criticize [the government] unfairly should know that our revenues have decreased by 9,000 billion rials but we are still standing on our feet and our commodity market is even better than in Europe," he added.
Iranian officials have provided various different estimates of the loss of revenue caused by the U.S. sanctions. In December 2019, President Rouhani said that the sanctions reduced Iran's revenues by $200 billion, while Vice-President Es'haq Jahangiri said in June that Iran's oil revenues dropped from $100 billion to $8 billion in the previous Iranian calendar year, which ended on March 20, 2020.
In a recent exclusive interview with Radio Farda, Brian Hook, the United States Special Representative for Iran, cited the $200 billion impact that the sanctions have cost Iran as proof of the effectiveness of the U.S. administration's maximum pressure policy on the country.
