Oil Minister Downplays Impacts of Sanctions on Iran's Energy Sector

Tehran, May 01 (QNA) - Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qassemi has played down the effects of the western sanctions against the country's energy sector, and said that Tehran has managed to turn the embargos into opportunities in a bid to make further progress. "Tougher sanctions and restrictions imposed by the West against Iran's energy sector have failed to stop the country's oil industry from running," Qassemi was quoted by Fars News Agency (FNA) as saying Tuesday. The Iranian oil minister said that the country's experts and specialists have managed to foil the US-led western sanctions against Iran by turning the embargos into opportunities. Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry. Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions and the western embargos for turning down West's calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment. Tehran has dismissed West's demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing those sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians' national resolve to continue the path. Tehran has repeatedly said that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities. (QNA).