Opposition Leader Mousavi Warns UN Sanctions Will Hurt Iranian Civilians

Sanctions Will Lead to Heavy Unemployment

Key Iranian opposition figure and former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi today warned the international community against the Obama Administration UN sanctions, noting that they will do serious harm to Iran’s private economy and its civilian population.

Though Mousavi was quick to criticize President Ahmadinejad’s “tactless” foreign policy as a driven force behind the sanctions, he cautioned that it would do serious damage to entrepreneurs and would cause heavy unemployment across the nation.

Mousavi ran a failed presidential campaign last June in Iran, and was the leader of the unsuccessful Green Revolution amid claims of voter fraud. Since then he had continued to organize intermittent protests against the Iranian government.

The US announced the sanctions early last week, just a day after the Iranian government reached a third party enrichment deal which had ostensibly been sought by the US.

Since then the US had slammed the enrichment deal itself, and suggested that it was never really interested in it to begin with. Moreover, they have insisted the sanctions have nothing to do with the enrichment deal, even though when they were proposed in January they were ostensibly to “punish” Iran for not agreement to the deal at the time.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.