Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh

The Foreign Ministry spokesman calls the new US sanctions against Iran the continuation of Washington’s abortive policies concerning the Islamic Republic.

The Islamic Republic considers the US’s new sanctioning efforts to be the continuation of former US president Donald Trump’s defeated maximum pressure policy, Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Thursday.

The remarks came after the US Treasury Department placed six Iranian persons and one institution on Washington’s sanctions list under the pretext of their trying to impact on the 2020 US presidential elections.

These are efforts that are taken out of desperation, he said, condemning the sanctions an illegitimate bid on the part of a country that, itself, tows a longstanding record of interfering in various other nations’ internal affairs.

France’s interference in IAEA’s work

Khatibzadeh separately condemned remarks made by his French counterpart Anne-Claire Legendre, through which she had called on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to send a strong message to Iran and urged that the Islamic Republic return to its nuclear obligations without delay.

The French official’s comments earlier in the day concerned Iran’s legitimate remedial nuclear steps that the Islamic Republic has been taking in retaliation for counterparty non-commitment to a 2015 nuclear deal between the Islamic Republic and others.

Iran initiated the counter-steps in 2019, after observing a year of strategic patience in the face of the US’s withdrawal from the deal, its re-introduction of the sanctions that the agreement had lifted, and others, including France itself’s refusal to object to the sanctions.

Khatibzadeh referred to the French official’s remarks as a means of trying to influence the IAEA’s attitude, saying such meddlesome comments only served to tarnish the agency’s reputation as a technical and specialist UN organization.

US, allies’ anti-Iran statement

Finally, the Iranian official commented on an anti-Iran statement issued on Thursday following a meeting in the Saudi capital Riyadh between the US’s point man on Iran, Robert Malley, European envoys, and officials from the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council.

The statement repeated the collective countries’ Iranophobic remarks concerning the Islamic Republic’s nuclear work and its regional influence.

Khatibzadeh highlighted the countries’ own history of regional trouble-making and interference, saying the meeting and its concluding statement was so factitious and lacking in legitimacy that does not warrant a reaction.