Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Minister of the Interior, Pour Mahmoudi

Related: World Bank Suspends Iran Aid Payments

AFP, Tehran:

Iranians should adopt austerity measures to limit the impact of sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear drive, a cabinet minister said on Sunday, amid warnings by world powers of further punitive action.

The minister’s cautioning remarks were in contrast to the usual official rhetoric over sanctions led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly brushed off sanctions as just “pieces of paper.”

Interior Minister Mostafa Pour Mohammadi, in a speech marking the 28th anniversary of the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran, said Iranians needed to cut back on consumption to ensure the sanctions wouldn’t hurt Iran.

“All of us in our households can bring down our consumption expenditure by 10 percent. Our culture of consumption needs to be changed. We need to send a call to the young people,” he said.

With winter approaching, Iran will be looking to cut down especially on gas consumption, where excess demand has caused shortages in the past.

However Pour Mohammadi expressed confidence Iranians could adopt the right measures.

“The sanctions I am sure will not affect and harm the Iranian people. But we should do everything to ensure our progress is not stopped,” he told thousands of schoolchildren and students chanting “Death to America!”

“The cabinet is looking into this,” he added.

“I assure you that God willing the deceitful plots hatched by the enemy will be futile and the process of development will not be disrupted,” Pour Mohammadi added.

Iran has already been the target of two sets of UN sanctions over its nuclear programme, and the United States and its Western allies are pushing for a third package that could hit the wider economy.

Western powers have also been acting unilaterally against Iran, most notably by putting pressure on its banking system.

The United States has also never ruled out military action against Tehran to end its defiance, with US President George W. Bush raising the prospect of “nuclear holocaust” and “World War III” if Iran acquired atomic weapons.

Pour Mohammadi described such warnings as a “joke” that even the Americans did not believe, but nonetheless said Iran needed to show “national solidarity” at this time.

“We have to be steadfast and the plots will not harm us. The secret of national solidarity is what did away with military plots in the past by the enemy,” he said.

His speech marked the anniversary of an event that led Washington to break off diplomatic relations with the Islamic republic, a rupture that has yet to be healed.

Iran still lauds the seizure as a revolutionary act while Washington condemns it as an abuse of human rights. Pour Mohammadi described the seizure as a “great and glorious event” that was still inspiring Iran.