Iran Press/America: "With the so-called 'maximum pressure' strategy, the United States continued to tighten its rope around the neck of Iran by escalating sanctions, in an unrealistic attempt to force Iran to return to the negotiating table on the nuclear issue under Washington's terms,' it wrote in a year-ender commentary.
The US's 2018 re-imposition of unilateral sanctions on Iran and its withdrawal from the multilateral 2015 nuclear deal was retaliated by Tehran's scale back of its obligations under the agreement in 2019.
Headlined "Another year of chaos and tumult in Middle East", the agency suggested that 2019 would go down in history as one of the "most tumultuous years" in the Middle East, marked by the dangerous situation in the Persian Gulf teetering on the brink of a war characterized by Washington's interventionist policies.
"The U.-provoked standoff with Iran in the past year threatened not only global energy security but also regional stability," read the commentary.
Xinhua concluded by posing the question: "For the Middle East to achieve a just and lasting peace, the United States should end its hegemonic and interventionist policies, but would that be possible?"
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