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Updated 12 hours ago
The Treasury Department on Friday placed new sanctions on Iran, which in turn vowed to retaliate, as the Trump administration threatened more punitive measures in response to ballistic missile tests and what it called other “provocations.”
The United States targeted 13 people and a dozen businesses said to be involved in helping develop Iran's ballistic missile program or in assisting the elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in supporting groups that the United States considers terrorists, such as Lebanon's Hezbollah.
“Iran's continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide, and to the United States,” said John Smith, acting director of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. “Today's action is part of Treasury's ongoing efforts to counter Iranian malign activity abroad.”
In response, the Iranian Foreign Ministry declared that it would impose legal restrictions on Americans “involved in helping and founding regional terrorist groups.” It did not provide names or further details.
The United States considers any test of a missile it believes can carry a nuclear payload a violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution, but Iran insists that its missiles are for conventional defense and are permissible.
Iran says further U.S. sanctions are a violation of the nuclear accord that Tehran reached with the United States and five world powers in 2015. The agreement placed restrictions on Iran's nuclear program to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon in exchange for the lifting of nuclear-related sanctions.
Shortly before the latest round of sanctions was announced, Ahmed Khatami, a senior Iranian cleric, said that if the White House expanded sanctions, it would be “a clear violation of the nuclear deal.”
“We are living in a world full of wolves, like the United States, and in such a world we need arms to defend ourselves,” Khatami said, according to Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency.
Neither side, for now, seems willing to revoke the agreement itself, but the Trump administration says it is determined to harden the U.S. approach to Tehran.
President Trump tweeted Friday morning that Iran was “playing with fire” and said, “They don't appreciate how ‘kind' President Barack Obama was to them. Not me.”
Asked Thursday by reporters whether his administration's new posture could mean military action, Trump answered, “Nothing's off the table.”
Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, tweeted in response Friday that Iran is “unmoved by threats.”
The U.S. sanctions are the first concrete evidence of the Trump administration's intention to take a more aggressive and confrontational approach toward Iran. The move was triggered by the Jan. 29 test of a medium-range ballistic missile, in what was widely considered to be Tehran's probing of how far the new administration is prepared to go.
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