Foreign Minister Javad Zarif wrote to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressing “strong dismay over the announcement that the Islamic Republic of Iran will lose its voting privileges in the UN General Assembly due to arrears in the payment of its financial contribution”, explaining: “Iran’s inability to fulfil its financial obligation toward the United Nations is directly caused by ‘unlawful, unilateral sanctions’ imposed by the U.S.”. “The people of Iran have been under the most unprecedented economic warfare – and indeed economic terrorism – following the Trump administration’s U.S. unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA (shamelessly continued to this day by its successor as so-called ‘bargaining leverage’)”, he added. In a tweet, Zarif also referred to the U.S. having sold seized Iranian oil and maintained: “The UN can also collect from $110m that the U.S. stole in recent piracy”.