Tehran dismisses the Iran section of the US administration's annual "human rights" report as untrue and politically motivated, saying Washington has turned into the "biggest violator" of the Iranian people's human rights by slapping the nation with unlawful economic sanctions.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi was referring to the so-called Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2018, in which the US State Department has once again leveled a host of unfounded accusations of rights abuses against the Islamic Republic.
The report, which was released on March 13, claimed that Iran's human rights record had "remained extremely poor and worsened in several key areas." The report also singled out Washington's other adversaries, including China, Russia and North Korea like in previous years.
Responding to the US rights claims, Qassemi said "the issues mentioned in this report regarding the situation of human rights in our country are merely [based on] political, biased and untrue analyses of certain developments inside Iran, about which the US is not eligible to comment due to its indefensible and dark human rights record."
The Iranian further blasted the White House for unleashing a campaign of economic pressure and sanctions against the Iranian nation and said "the US administration has been the biggest violator of the Iranian nation's human rights."
The White House, he added, "has stopped short of no measure in breaching the rights of Iranians."
Qassemi said the unilateral sanctions -- which were reinstated after Washington's withdrawal from a 2015 multinational nuclear deal with Iran, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- run contrary to international law and court rulings as well as reports by independent human rights rapporteurs.
Qassemi further listed a number of Washington's brazen human rights abuses in different corners of the world from the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories to the war-torn Yemen.
The US -- which has been under fire from the public opinion, governments, activists and global institutions due to its own bleak record of rights abuses -- is no position to point the finger of blame at any country, the official added.