Mattis: Iran failed to remove people’s dissatisfaction

US imposes fresh sanctions on Iranian entities

(News agencies) – US Secretary of Defense James Mattis said on Friday that Iran has obviously failed in removing the irritants and dissatisfaction of the Iranian people.

“We — the American people — do not have an issue with the Iranian people. We’ve got a big issue with the Iranian authoritarian regime and it appears there are an awful lot of Iranian people who have an issue with it as well”, Sky News channel reported, quoting Mattis as saying.

“We all remember what happened to the Greens when they came out and the merciless way they were treated by the regime there,” the secretary said. Because even after squashing the Green Revolution years ago, they did not remove the anger and dissatisfaction of the Iranians,” he added.

The US Department of State announced earlier that the US is considering imposing new sanctions on Iran over its crackdown on anti-government protests, which have led to clashes between demonstrators and security forces and left at least 22 people dead.

On the other hand, The U.S sanctioned five Iranian entities for their work on the nation’s ballistic missile program and signaled that more punitive measures lay ahead in response to the Islamic Republic’s suppression of anti-government protests.

The entities, none of which are publicly traded, are being designated for being owned or controlled by Iran’s Shahid Bakeri Industrial Group, the Treasury Department said in a statement released Thursday.