RT reported that in a speech on November 16 local time, Mr. Ali Shamkhani - Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council - accused the US-led West of trying to "use various tricks in the form of their own hybrid war to sabotage Iran.
The senior Iranian official stated that "the Americans themselves openly admitted that they created the IS and Al-Qaeda groups" with the aim of creating a rift between Iran and its neighbors, as well as to protect Tehran's ally and arch-enemy, Israel.
Mr. Shamkhani continued to condemn the US sanctions against Iran, which were first imposed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. “The Americans should pay Iran $1,000 billion in damages because they have suppressed our country for 25 years,” he said.
In the decades since the Islamic Revolution, the US has imposed several rounds of economic sanctions on Iran, while labeling Tehran a “state sponsor of terrorism”.
The only notable rapprochement between the two countries came in 2015, when Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for partial sanctions relief.
However, in 2018, the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the deal, reimposing sanctions targeting Iran's oil and financial industries.
In 2021, former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif claimed that US sanctions had caused $1 trillion worth of damage to the Iranian economy, demanding compensation from Washington as a precondition for returning to the Iran nuclear deal.
Shamkhani's comments came after an Iranian court ruled in December 2023 that the US government must pay nearly $50 billion in compensation for the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran's Quds Force, in 2020, as well as publicly apologize to more than 3,000 Iranian citizens who filed lawsuits.
