Iran said on Tuesday that a decision by the United States to impose “hard-hitting” sanctions on the country’s top leadership, including the supreme leader, has permanently closed the path to diplomacy between Tehran and Washington.
“Imposing useless sanctions on Iran’s Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the commander of Iran’s diplomacy (Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif) is the permanent closure of the path of diplomacy,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said in a tweet.
“Trump’s desperate administration is destroying the established international mechanisms for maintaining world peace and security.”
But the US National Security Adviser John Bolton said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump is open to negotiations and “all that Iran needs to do is walk through that open door”.
Bolton said the US wants to hold talks to “verifiably eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, its ballistic missile delivery systems, its support for international terrorism and other malign behaviour worldwide,” Bolton said in Jerusalem.
He said US envoys have been in the region working to find a path to lowering tensions between the two countries, but that the silence of the Islamic Republic has been “deafening”.
Trump targeted Khamenei and other top Iranian officials with sanctions on Monday, in an unprecedented move to increase pressure on Iran after Tehran’s downing of an unmanned US drone last week.
Washington said it will also impose sanctions on Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif this week.
The targets of the new sanctions include senior military figures in Iran, blocking their access to any financial assets under US jurisdiction. They also work to deny Khamenei’s and his close aides’ access to money and support.
SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies
