TEHRAN — Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi has said the government, nation and all pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran do not attach the slightest significance to the United States’ “insane” sanctions.

According to The Associated Press, the Trump administration on Thursday ratcheted up pressure on Iran by slapping sanctions on top members of Iran’s Guardian Council, a body that vets candidates before elections.

The sanctions came a day before Iranians go to the polls to participate in the parliamentary elections.

Those targeted include the chief of the council, Ahmad Jannati, and senior member Mohammad Yazdi. The sanctions also affect Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, who serves as the council’s spokesman.

“Such measures are nothing but failure, disappointment and collapse of the American regime’s maximum pressure policy,” Mousavi said on Friday, according to Mehr.

“Those who have put 83 million Iranians under their sanctions, economic terrorism and maximum pressure but failed have now targeted Iran’s electoral system out of desperation and disappointment,” he said.

This proves the extent of their fear from Iran’s democracy and people’s turnout, the spokesman concluded.

Mousavi also said Iran’s approach in the fight against maximum pressure is “maximum resistance”.

It’s the American rulers who will have to bow before the Iranian nation’s resolve and will have to learn that they must speak with the Iranian people through reverence, not sanctions, he added.

The sanctions announced by the State and Treasury departments include freezes on any assets the sanctioned individuals may have in U.S. jurisdictions, or that they try to move through the U.S. banking system. Also, Americans are barred from doing business with them. It was not immediately clear if the sanctions would have any practical effect, but Brian Hooks, the U.S. special envoy for Iran, said it’s important to highlight the role of clerics who are not widely known outside of Iran.

Thursday’s announcement was the latest move in the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure campaign” against Iran that began after Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and began to re-impose sanctions that had been eased under that accord and imposed new ones.

Iran responded to the maximum pressure campaign on May 8, exactly one year after the U.S. abandoned the deal, when it said its “strategic patience” is over and began to partially reduce its commitments to the agreement at bi-monthly steps.

Eventually, in its fifth and final step on January 5, Iran suspended all limits under the nuclear pact.

MH/PA