Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Sunday that Iran will not succumb to economic pressure by Washington.

“Abandon the illusion that Iran can be defeated by pressure,” he told NPR.

“We are resisting an unprovoked aggression by the United States. I can assure you that the United States will not be able to bring us to our knees through pressure,” the chief diplomat pointed out.

He also said, “The United States can have a much better deal with Iran if they started talking to us based on respect, based on mutual respect and based on moving forward.”

U.S. President Donald Trump quit the 2015 nuclear deal in May 2018 and introduced the harshest ever sanctions on Iran as part of “maximum pressure” against the country.

On Friday, the U.S. announced fresh economic sanctions against Iran in response to a September 14 attack on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by Yemenis, but the U.S. and Saudi Arabia blame Iran. Tehran has called the blame game a “maximum deceit” in line with the “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran 

Zarif told NPR, “I know that Iran didn’t have anything to do with it. Who did it? I just take the Yemeni claim at face value. If you want to go to conspiracy theory and ask who had an interest in doing that, there’d be a lot of people in the list of interested participants — not least of which the United States and Israel.”

NA/PA