ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Long-term efforts by the administration of US President Donald Trump to rein in the Iranian regime has left survivors of an Iraqi gas attack on Kurds 32 years ago short on the specialized European medicines they need and reliant on poorer quality alternatives.
Osman Mozayan is a lawyer and member of the Council for Defending the Chemical Victims of Sardasht in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran.
“The people of Sardasht suffer from drug scarcity and they have to find a solution,” he told Rudaw English on Tuesday.
Although people suffered from drug scarcity before US sanctions were re-implemented after it withdrew from the nuclear deal last year, the situation is now even more dire for many chronically ill patients.
“When you go to a pharmacy, they do not give you as many tablets as you want, they only give you one," Mozayan detailed, adding the drugs are often "rare to find and expensive."
Prior to the nuclear deal in 2015, Iran had been under similar US sanctions that prevented European countries from selling medicines for chronic and hard-to-treat conditions. Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis said at the time that the flow of life-saving products was "severely affected, if not fully ceased."
The United States clarified a list of medical devices exempted from sanctions but requiring companies to obtain authorization the Department of Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control prior their "exportation or re-exportation."
"Our sanctions regime has made exceptions for humanitarian purposes, for food, for medicine, for agricultural products, medical devices," Brian Hook, the US Secretary of State's Special Representative for Iran said at a press conference in Brussels on June 24.
Increasingly, though, people in Iran are having to turn to medicines manufactured domestically, or to imports from countries like India or China.
Mozayan claimed that Iranian officials have asked the owners of drug stores not to make all foreign products in stock available, to encourage people to use "lower-quality" medicines.
However, he emphasized the crises and sanctions should not lead to a medicine scarcity for patients, and for the international community "to separate political issues from humanitarian ones."
While politicians in Washington, Brussels, and Tehran continue their rhetoric, patients in Sardasht are trying to get accustomed to using different medications.
European diplomats predicted the shortage last year when US sanctions were announced and then implemented.
“The fact is that the banks are so terrified by the sanctions that they don’t want to do anything with Iran,” Gerard Araud, France’s ambassador to the United Nations, said at a Hudson Institute event in October. “So it means that there is a strong risk that in a few months really there will be a shortage of medicine in Iran.”
A painful lingering history in Sardasht
At the tail end of the Iran-Iraq war on June 28, 1987, warplanes from the Baath regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein dropped mustard gas on Sardasht, believing the Kurdish city and its inhabitants were aiding Iran in the war.
"Those who were carried through the hills here were bombed at least 50 times. They [Iraqi airstrikes] had tried to halt Iranian soldiers and many came to villages to try to stay alive. The people who suffered [injuries or ill health] during the war could no longer live well," survivor Rasul Molai told the German television news service Tagesschau (ARD) in an interview published on Sunday.
He and others still suffer from breathing and skin problems due to the lingering effects of the chemical attacks. "I have constant mucous in my throat. The problem is that I do not know how sick I am. I have a constant cough because of my affected bronchi and respiratory tract. That is why I say 'I hope people do not have to be as sick as I am.' That is why the [German] companies should re-examine it," Molai implored.
Standing in the countryside, he explained the relief offered by fresh, mountain air while stances on US sanctions in Tehran and Washington remain fixed.
"I am glad that I can remain here. Already my children have been consumed with unhappiness. The conditions [in cities] are so filthy and hot. The automobiles and heat are not good for me. But here, the air is much better for me. When I am here, I have better air quality. That is the reason why I stay," he said.
Sardasht is 530 kilometers west from the Islamic Republic's economic hub and capital.
"Once a year, officials from Tehran come here and denounce foreign countries. Then, they go back and forget us," one of Sardasht victims told ARD.
German firms Karl Kolb, Bayer, or Industriekonzern Preussag (TUI) have been blamed for selling the chemicals to the Baath Regime, according to Germany's Die Tageszeitung (TAZ) in 2002.
Similar efforts to hold European companies accountable for selling chemicals to Saddam Hussein have been made by the Halabja Chemical Weapons Victims Society in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. American lawyer Gavi Mairone represents 1,380 people from Halabja and say they "have a mountain of evidence" in their case.
Other solutions?
Washington's sanctions on Iran namely forbid firms, including many pharmaceutical and chemical companies in Europe, from using US banking and financial systems. The move has effectively forced European firms to choose between transacting with the US dollar and Iranian currency.
Europe has proposed a trade channel called INSTEX, but Iran says Europe has yet to assign a bank to handle the trade. Iran would also like Europe to purchase oil, as Iranian exports have dwindled to less than 500,000 barrels per month.
Meanwhile, AFP reported in early June that a "special purpose vehicle" (SPV) was in the works allowing Iraq to establish a special bank account in dinars.
Food and medicine were explicitly mentioned in the report that US officials have been unable to confirm.
"Iran will not be able to withdraw the money, but will be able to use it to purchase goods from outside Iraq," an Iraqi source told AFP.
The United States requested an emergency summit of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Wednesday amid Iranian enrichment of uranium past the 3.67 percent threshold set by the nuclear deal.
"President Trump's maximum pressure campaign against Iran is working," Trump's National Security Adviser John Bolton said at a Christians United for Israel (CUFI) event on Tuesday. "We're just getting started ... The president's goal is to get a new deal that would be negotiated in the best interests of the United States."
Iran's Ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht Ravanchi described the tensions as "really dangerous" with neither side ready to come to the negotiating table.
“You cannot start a dialogue with somebody who is threatening you, who is intimidating you,” Ravanchi told reporters last month. “How can we start a dialogue with somebody whose primary occupation is to put more sanctions on Iran? The atmosphere is not conducive to dialogue.”
Additional reporting by Karwan Faidhi Dri
