TEHRAN, November 10. /TASS/. Iran has never asked the United States to lift its sanctions, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) of Iran Ali Larijani said.

US President Donald Trump said on November 7 that Tehran had asked the American side to lift sanctions against the republic and that the US administration was ready to listen to the Iranian authorities.

"There has been no message to the United States but the Iranians do want these sanctions to be lifted. Is there someone out there who thinks that we want the sanctions to stay in place?" he told journalists on the sidelines of a conference titled "We and the West in Ayatollah Khamenei’s World Outlook."

According to Larijani, the Iranian government is sparing no effort to have the sanctions removed but it did not send any signals via diplomatic channels, pointing out that the last time Tehran tried to negotiate with the United States, it ended in a 12-day war and attacks on Iranian nuclear sites.

On November 14, 1979, Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, signed Executive Order 12170 in response to the seizure of US hostages in Tehran. The US Treasury Department was instructed to freeze all official Iranian assets in the United States, including accounts with American banks and their foreign branches and offices. This effectively introduced the first punitive economic measures against Iran. On April 7, 1980, Carter severed diplomatic relations with Tehran and banned all exports from the United States to Iran, including food and medicine. Then, an embargo was imposed on the import of any goods from Iran to the US, and Americans were banned from traveling to Iran. On November 6, US President Donald Trump extended the national emergency against Iran, which allows for unilateral sanctions against that country.