By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
NOVEMBER 30, 2019 07:09
The US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell on Friday savaged the Norwegian ambassador to Iran for lauding a European system to circumvent American sanctions targeting the Islamic Republic of Iran for Tehran’s illicit nuclear activities and terrorism.
“Terrible timing – why fund the Iranian regime while its killing the Iranian people and shutting off the internet? You should be standing for human rights not funding the abusers,” tweeted Grenell, the most high-profile US ambassador in Europe.
The UK-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International said in November at least 143 protesters were killed in Iran during demonstrations against the regime due to gas price increases and opposition to the clerical regime system.
Norway’s ambassador to Iran, Lars Nordrum, tweeted that “Today announced that we join INSTEX with the E3 to facilitate trade with Iran and preserve the JCPOA.”The JCPOA is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,the formal name for the Iran nuclear deal that is supposed to curb Tehran’s nuclear weapons ambitions in exchange for sanctions release.
INSTEX is an abbreviation for The Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges, a European special-purpose vehicle (SPV) launched in January 2019 to circumvent US sanctions imposed on Iran. The US withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 because, the Trump administration said, the agreement does not stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, ballistic missiles and its use of terrorism.