Tabnak – In a latest sign of its confrontational policy toward Iran, the US administration yesterday imposed new sanctions against persons and entities related to the Iranian government. In its turn, Iran has vowed to retaliate Washington’s hostile acts properly and by the necessary means.
Iranian news outlet Press TV reports that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has vowed that Iran will reciprocate the sanctions that are imposed by the United States against the Islamic Republic "under any pretext.”
"Surely, if the Americans seek to apply sanctions against us under whatever title or pretext, the great nation of Iran would aptly respond to them,” President Hassan Rouhani told a government session on Wednesday.
The administration of US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that it was imposing new economic sanctions against Iran over its ballistic missile program. The US Departments of Treasury and State said they were targeting 18 Iranian individuals, groups and networks, freezing their assets in the US and preventing Americans from doing business with them.
At the same time, Iran's Foreign Ministry condemned the latest sanctions as a "worthless move" and said it would soon impose "sanctions on a number of American natural and legal persons which have taken measures against Iran and other Muslim regional nations."
The ministry statement noted US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson "once again confirmed Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal in a letter to the US Congress in a move that ran counter to all their previous claims" of Iranian misbehavior.
The statement said the "unilateral and illegal sanctions" were designed to compensate for the Trump administration's failure to persuade its European allies to withdraw from the nuclear deal.
The United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU) have warned that the US could not unilaterally rescind the multilateral agreement. They regard the deal as a triumph for diplomacy and a major contributing factor to regional and international peace and stability.
However, as likelihood has still remained for the US to withdraw from the deal, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Monday warned that any major non-performance by the US may prompt Iran’s withdrawal from the accord, too.
Zarif has also said the US is both in violation of the text and the spirit of the deal. "We’ll see if US prepared to live up to letter of the JCPOA (the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) let alone [its] spirit. So far, it has defied both” Zarif said on his official Twitter account on Friday.
Recent sanctions may be intended to poison the atmosphere and ultimately even sink the deal, according to Zarif.
Apart from the new sanctions, it should be noted that Washington has also prevented the deal from fully yielding intended results by refusing to offer international financial institutions the guarantees they need in order to restore transactions with Iran.
