Iran denounced US plans to announce new sanctions on Saturday, ahead of a Treasury Department briefing due on Monday that Washington has said will impose the heaviest financial penalties in its history.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said in a post on X that the imminent announcement amounted to “an assertion of extraterritorial sovereignty over every independent member state of the United Nations”. He added: “Such secondary sanctions find no foundation in international law.” In a separate statement reported by Al Jazeera, Baghaei described the end result as “the complete erosion of sovereignty” and “a recipe for an abysmal return to full-scale classic colonialism”.
Warning to the region
Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, told state television that Tehran would target the interests of countries that help the United States.
“We are telling all nearby countries not to join the U.S. economic war, otherwise we will consider them as enemies,” Rezaei said. Al Jazeera reported him warning of a “seismic” retaliation and describing Iran’s approach as a three-stage sequence beginning with attempts to de-escalate with neighbouring states.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is due to hold a press conference at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) on Monday, after pledging “the toughest sanctions in history”. He has urged cooperation from China, which buys more than 80% of Iran’s shipped oil according to 2025 data from analytics firm Kpler. Beijing has called for diplomacy.
President Donald Trump, who has warned of consequences for any country providing “any type of lifeline” to Iran, said on Friday that Washington was watching “what happens” in the conflict. “They would love to make a deal, but they’re not ready to make the right deal, in my opinion,” he said.
Hormuz still bottled up
Nearly six months after the US and Israel launched airstrikes on February 28, the two sides are neither firing at each other nor moving towards talks, Reuters reported.
Only four commodity ships sailed through the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, ship-tracking data showed, none of them large crude carriers or liquefied natural gas tankers. The United States has effectively blockaded Iranian vessels in their ports, leaving thousands of seafarers stranded aboard hundreds of ships.
Iran has granted passage to a number of Iraqi oil tankers after repeated requests from Baghdad, its state news agency reported.
