Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi (Photo by President.ir)

Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi has hailed the nation’s resolve against the US sanctions, saying the mentality is paying off with continued growth in oil sales.

Raeisi said late on Friday that Iran’s rising oil exports and its improved ability to recover export proceeds is a sign the country has been on a right path of standing up to US sanctions for the past three years.

I am sure sanctions and bottlenecks will never stop us but they make us more determined in (making) progress, he said while at the end of a tour of the central province of Yazd.

And today we are witnessing the impacts of this confidence in the form of some relaxations in oil exports and recovering its revenues,’ said the Iranian president.

The comments come amid recurrent reports suggesting that Iran has managed to increase its shipments of crude to Asia and elsewhere in recent months despite sanctions imposed by the US which impose heavy fines on buyers of oil from Iran.

A Friday report by Bloomberg said that Iran’s crude exports to independent refiners in China had reached an average of 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) in November.

The report, which cited figures by business data supplier Kpler, showed that Chinese purchases of Iranian crude had increased by 40% against October despite persistent trade difficulties facing companies because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Raeisi’s government has touted growing oil sales as a major success for an administration that came to office only in August.

Experts believe that lack of leniency shown by Iran against the US will finally force Washington to accept Iran’s demands for reviving a 2015 nuclear deal that has unraveled since a former US government decided to pull out of the agreement in 2018.