WASHINGTON, July 18, (APP/AFP) – The US and
Iran traded tit-for-tat sanctions on Tuesday over the Islamic State’s ballistic missile program, just hours after Washington admitted Tehran was complying with a landmark nuclear deal signed two years ago.
After the US announced its new sanctions, Iran hit back, calling them
“worthless” and “illegal” and announcing its own sanctions “against American
people and entities that have acted against the Iranian people and other Muslim peoples of the region.”
“The Americans… want to weaken the capabilities and strength of the
Islamic regime,” said General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who heads the Revolutionary
Guard Corps’ aerospace wing and missile program.
“We propose reciprocal actions with a high cost.”
Iran’s parliament also voted to authorize extra funding for the missile
program and the Revolutionary Guard’s foreign operations wing, the Quds Force,
which Washington accuses of fomenting unrest across the region.
The heightened tensions came after President Donald Trump was forced to
back off from a key campaign promise to withdraw from a 2015 nuclear accord
with Tehran, which eased sanctions in return for limiting its ability to
produce material for atomic weapons.
Trump had described it as “the worst deal ever” and accused Iran of
continuing to back terrorism in the Middle East. But on Monday, the White House
admitted that the Islamic Republic was sticking to the nukes agreement.
It noted, however, that while Iran might be meeting its requirements on
paper, it was “unquestionably in default of the spirit” of the accord.
In announcing the new sanctions against 18 individuals and entities in
Iran, the State Department said it “remains deeply concerned about Iran’s
malign activities across the Middle East which undermine regional stability,
security, and prosperity.”
It cited Iran’s support for Lebanon-based Hezbollah, the Islamic movement
Hamas, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and Huthi rebels in Yemen
fighting a US-backed coalition led by Saudi Arabia.
The Pentagon has also repeatedly voiced concern over a string of
high-profile incidents in waters off Iran involving Iranian vessels.
It has accused the Revolutionary Guard of conducting risky maneuvers around
US warships in the Gulf, some of which resulted in the Americans firing warning
shots.
“These sanctions target procurement of advanced military hardware, such as
fast attack boats and unmanned aerial vehicles, and send a strong signal that
the United States cannot and will not tolerate Iran’s provocative and
destabilizing behavior,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
Washington is also concerned about the fate of Xiyue Wang, a 37-year-old
Chinese-American researcher at Princeton University who was recently sentenced
to 10 years in Iranian prison.
– Iran pushback –
=================
While the US complained about Iran’s defiance of the spirit of the nuclear
accord, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said he would make his
own complaints about US non-compliance when representatives of the five nuclear
powers — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany
meet in Vienna on Friday to take stock of the deal.
Zarif accused the Trump administration of failing to lift sanctions in line
with the deal.
He said he had no communication with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in
stark contrast to his predecessor John Kerry, with whom Zarif negotiated the
groundbreaking nuclear deal.
“It doesn’t mean there can’t be. The possibilities for engagement… have
always been open,” said Zarif in New York, where he was attending a UN
development forum.
He said he was willing to discuss Wang’s case “on humanitarian grounds,”
but stressed that Iran’s courts were independent of the government.
Trump and his top security officials have always taken a tough line on
Iran: his defense secretary, Jim Mattis, fought Iranian-backed militias during
the US occupation of Iraq while serving as a Marine general, and memories are
still fresh of Hezbollah’s attack on the Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon in
1983.