Chanting “Death to America,” Iran’s Parliament voted unanimously on Sunday to increase spending on its ballistic missile program and the foreign operations of its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, part of a Sanctions Bill mirroring a new US law targeting country.
While offering hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding, the lawmakers’ Bill offered a tactic as old as the slogan shouted since the 1979 Islamic Revolution — using America’s own tactics against it. The vote salves public anger in Iran over US President Donald Trump’s constant threats to renegotiate or abandon the nuclear deal struck by world powers under his predecessor.
While lawmakers stressed the bill wouldn’t violate that agreement, it ensures those both home and abroad know Iran will continue confronting America either in the Persian Gulf or legislatively, analysts say.
“They want to show that the pressure that the US is exerting on Iran, they can respond with similar measures,” said Adnan Tabatabai, an Iran analyst based in Germany who is the CEO of the Centre for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient. “It’s not that important that those measures may not hurt the US in the same way... They want to show they are not just standing still and watching this happening.”
In the Session, 240 lawmakers voted for the Bill, with only one abstention from the 247 legislators on hand, Iran’s state-run news agency IRNA reported. Under terms of the bill, some $800 million will be put toward several projects, including the Defence Ministry and its Intelligence agencies. Among the agencies receiving money would be the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds force, an expeditionary force run by Gen Qassem Soleimani, who has been advising forces in Syria and Iraq.