Iran yesterday sharply criticized new US sanctions targeting the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader and other top officials, saying the measures spell the “permanent closure” for diplomacy between the two nations.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani described the White House as “afflicted by mental retardation.”
He added that the sanctions against Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were “outrageous and idiotic,” especially as the 80-year-old Shiite cleric has no plans to ever travel to the US.
Photo: Reuters / West Asia News Agency
From Israel, White House National Security Adviser John Bolton said that talks were still possible and that Washington was leaving an “open door” for Iran to walk through.
However, the comments from Tehran clearly showed that its leaders think otherwise at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran over its nuclear program and Iran’s downing of a US military surveillance drone last week.
“The fruitless sanctions on Iran’s leadership and the chief of Iranian diplomacy mean the permanent closure of the road of diplomacy with the frustrated US administration,” the Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Abbas Mousavi as saying.
The crisis gripping the Middle East is rooted in US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the US a year ago from Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal and imposing crippling new sanctions on Tehran.
Iran has quadrupled its production of low-enriched uranium to be on pace to break one of the deal’s terms by tomorrow, while also threatening to raise enrichment closer to weapons-grade levels on July 7 — if Europe does not offer a new deal.
Citing unspecified Iranian threats, the US has sent an aircraft carrier to the Middle East and deployed additional troops alongside the tens of thousands already there.
All this has raised fears that a miscalculation or further rise in tensions could push the US and Iran into an open conflict, 40 years after the Islamic Revolution.
US officials also said they plan sanctions against Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif, something that drew Rouhani’s anger during his televised address yesterday.
“You sanction the foreign minister simultaneously with a request for talks,” an exasperated Rouhani said.
There was no immediate reaction from Washington early yesterday to the remarks from Iran.
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