US, Saudi, Israel all benefit from Iran sanctions

Keith Preston, director of Attackthesystem.com, said the sanctions were designed to put Iranian people under pressure and force the Islamic Republic to abandon its fundamental values.

He made the remarks in reaction to claims by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that economic bans were aimed at giving the Iranian people a chance to have better lives.

"The sanctions on Iran have this ultimate goal: creating an outcome where the Iranian people can have better lives than they have today," Pompeo told Newsmax TV on Thursday.

On November 5, the administration of US President Donald Trump announced the re-imposition of the “toughest” sanctions ever against Iran's banking and energy sectors with the aim of cutting off its oil sales and crucial exports. The bans had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Preston said a lot of ordinary Americans had no idea what the conflict between the United States and Iran was all about and that Pompeo’s rhetoric amounts to “propaganda for public consumption.”

He said the sanctions were in no way intended to improve the Iranian people’s lives, and instead, “they were holding Iranian people hostage for the purpose of influencing or trying to influence the Iranian government.”

The real issues between the United States and Iran are rooted in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which “removed a puppet government of the United States” and replaced it with a political system that resisted Washington’s policies instead, he continued.

“The reason that the United States has such a deep-seeded grudge against Iran is because of that,” the analyst further explained. “It’s because of the fact that Iran was a nation that defied the American empire.”

This, he argued, set an “example” that Washington didn’t want other nations to follow.

The second reason was the state of relations between Israel and the United States, Preston added.

“The fact that Israel regards Iran as one of its most important regional competitors in the area also intensifies the hostility of the United States towards Iran,” he said.

Preston said Saudi Arabia also had similar tendencies to weaken Iran and used its "influence" on the American foreign policy to make sure the sanctions remained in place.

Both Saudi Arabia and Israel have been helping the US form an Arab front against Iran—which is in many ways similar to the NATO military alliance.