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NIAC Applauds Extension of Earthquake Sanctions Waiver
NIAC applauds the Treasury Department for extending a sanctions waiver to help enable ongoing earthquake relief efforts in northern Iran, and calls for additional steps to ensure sanctions do not continue to block transactions of food and medicine.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jamal Abdi
Phone: 202-386-6408
Email: [email protected]
Washington,
DC – The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) applauds the Treasury
Department for extending a sanctions waiver to help enable ongoing earthquake
relief efforts in northern Iran, and calls for additional steps to
ensure sanctions do not continue to block transactions of food and medicine.
Last
week, Iranian Americans from across the country visited Capitol Hill as part of
NIAC’s annual leadership conference to encourage their Representatives to
send a Congressional letter urging the White House to extend the
earthquake relief waiver and to take further action to enable food and medicine
to reach Iranians.
“Iranian
Americans will be encouraged that the Obama Administration’s responded to their
calls to address the emergency situation in northern Iran,” said NIAC Policy
Director Jamal Abdi. “But more must be done to address another unfolding
emergency – the worsening humanitarian situation created by sanctions that are
blocking medicine and food for ordinary people across Iran.”
The earthquake
waiver, which was first issued in August after deadly earthquakes
struck northern Iran, is intended to allow American charities to send
direct humanitarian aid to help with relief efforts in Iran. In
addition to earthquake relief, food, medicine, and humanitarian goods are
already legally exempt from sanctions, but are increasingly difficult to export
to Iran due to Executive Order sanctions on Iran’s banks.
“Even
with the waiver, it is extremely difficult to provide humanitarian relief or
even to send authorized items like medicine and food to Iran,” said Abdi.
“U.S. sanctions on Iranian banks are blocking authorized transactions for food
and medicine. The result is food and medicine shortages that are
punishing ordinary Iranians who are not even in the earthquake zone.”
Some
relief organizations have been forced to fly suitcases of cash into Iran in
order to provide earthquake relief. And reports out of Iran point to
shortages of medicine and food as resulting directly from the U.S. banking
sanctions on Iran.
“The
U.S. must take additional steps to demonstrate that we will not allow ordinary
Iranians to be held hostage to the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program,” said
Abdi. “We cannot allow for a repeat of
the Iraq sanctions that contributed to the deaths of at least 375 thousand
children.”
NIAC
thanks Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and the eleven cosigners of the
letter to the Administration, and calls on the Obama Administration to take
the additional steps necessary so that food, medicine, and humanitarian relief
can reach Iran.
There are a number of nonprofit organizations working to
provide disaster assistance, including Moms Against Poverty, Relief
International, Children of
Persia, and Child
Foundation. The waiver now applies until
November 19.
###
2012-10-10 06:04:07
Source: http://www.niacouncil.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8617
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