"Their efforts will end nowhere. We are able to export as much oil as we need and wish," Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said two days after the United States announced that sanctions waivers granted to eight countries on the list of Iran's crude customers will not be extended.
"They need to understand that this hostility [will] not go unanswered," Khamenei warned, adding, "The Iranian nation will never remain silent in the face of their enmity." In his April 24 address on the occasion of Iran's Labor Week, Khamenei also suggested that the oil ban was a blessing in disguise, as it serves Iran's good by making its economy "less dependent upon crude sales."
