Iranian Jewish Lawmaker Says US Spreads Iranophobia To Sell Weapons

Iranian lawmaker Homayoun Sameyah Najafabadi on Monday accused the United States of promoting Iranophobia as a way to sell weapons, according to the semiofficial Fars News Agency. Najafabadi, who represents Iran’s Jewish community in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, Iran’s parliament, said the US has been spreading fear of Iran as a way to safeguard and pursue its economic interests since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and that the controversy surrounding Iran’s nuclear program was a new form of the same. He said Iran has proved that it favors dialogue and interaction, while the US has failed to honor its commitments on multiple occasions. Iran and the P5+1 group of world powers signed the nuclear deal known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in July 2015, trading a temporary curb on Iran’s nuclear program for the removal of sanctions on the country. But US President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the deal in May 2018 and reimposed sanctions, citing Iranian violations. Talks to revive the JCPOA, which begin in April 2021 in Vienna, were suspended in March of this year, but recently resumed in the Qatari capital of Doha.