Iran Press/ Iran News: "The Islamic Republic of Iran considers the US' 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 the 2020 US Presidential Elections.
"These are efforts that are taken out of desperation," he said, condemning the sanctions as an "illegitimate" bid on the part of a country that, itself, tows a longstanding record of interfering in various other nations' internal affairs.
French intervention undermines IAEA legitimacy: Khatibzadeh
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."
Earlier in the day, the French official's comments 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 (JCPOA) 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 JCPOA, its re-introduction of the sanctions that the agreement had lifted, and others, including France'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."
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