New Sanctions to Further Poison Iran-US Ties: FM Zarif

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif blasted the new anti-Tehran sanctions announced by the Trump administration and said the new US president should stop sending hostile signals to Iran.

The new sanctions introduced by the US administration are poisoning the already strained relations between the two countries, Zarif said in an interview with the CBS News.

“It [new US sanctions] violates the spirit of the [nuclear] deal. We will look at it and see whether it violates the letter of the deal, and we will act accordingly,” he noted.

Zarif pointed to the US president’s remarks about how bad the nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers is, and said, “It isn’t [a bad deal]. Well, no deal is completely acceptable to everybody.”

“This is a multilateral deal, approved by the Security Council, and it’s not a bilateral deal to be withdrawn from or to be renegotiated,” he said, rejecting the idea of renegotiating the JCPOA.

While the White House accuses Iran of supporting terrorists in Syria and Iraq, Zarif disputed the claim and placed blame on US allies like Saudi Arabia.

“These are the countries that are producing terrorists for you. And the United States is going after Iran. I don’t know why,” Zarif said.

“What the United States has done against the Iranian people over the past several months has been really repugnant,” he noted.

“I certainly think it is up to the US government to stop sending all these hostile signals,” he said.

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