Some of the news reports acknowledge that the US sanctions do not stop the Islamic Republic from buying any medical materials from the United States. But those reports say US banking restrictions make it impossible for Iran to buy medical supplies in the United States.
However, the Islamic Republic continues to buy medical equipment and pharmaceuticals from the United States. The latest US trade report shows Iran buying $25.3 million worth of medical materials from the US in the first half of this year.
However, that is a reduction from the purchase levels of last year. In 2011, Iran averaged $6.1 million a month in US medical purchases. In the first six months of this year, the average has been $4.2 million a month, a drop of one-third. But there is no way to know if that reflects banking problems or simply a normal buying cycle.
The claim of terrible harm if the Islamic Republic cannot get American medicines runs up against a claim by the regime of its great success in making medicines. A few months ago, Health Minister Marzieh Vahid-Dastjerdi proclaimed that Iran now makes 97 percent of all the medicines needed in Iran.
And last week, while damning the West for sanctioning medicinal sales, she said the sanctions had backfired because they encouraged Iran to produce its medical needs domestically. She then said that Iran is able to produce “all” its needed “biotechnological drugs” while filling 50 percent of the raw materials requirements for all other drugs.
The new claim that the Americans are denying Iran badly needed medicines started in May when former President Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani denounced the West for denying Iran “vital” medications. “How can Westerners claim they observe human rights when they put vital drugs for patients on their list of merciless sanctions?” Rafsanjani said.
He did not blame banking restrictions, but rather averred outright that medicines may not be sold to Iran. No country has any embargo on such sales to Iran.
More recently, Rafsanjani’s daughter, Fatemeh, who heads Iran’s Charity Foundation for Special Diseases, said she had written UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to protest the halt in sales of many medicines to Iran. She blamed banking restrictions.
She said the sanctions are in direct violation of “the fundamental human rights of ordinary citizens” of Iran. She said the banking restrictions create an “atmosphere of intimation.”
She wrote that shortages of some medicines and the increased prices of others “have directly impacted the lives and well-being” of six million Iranian—eight percent of the total population—who suffer from thalassemia, hemophilia, kidney conditions, multiple sclerosis, cancer and other diseases.
The Iranian Hemophilia Society also joined in the complaint, writing the World Health Organization that sanctions are endangering the lives of the country’s hemophiliacs.
PressTV, the English language arm of state broadcasting, said that the banking restrictions have led to a decline in the supply of more than 50 kinds of medicines.