TEHRAN: Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, has accused the US of “illegal meddling” and ordered his defence minister to step up his country’s ballistic missile programme in response to the prospect of new White House sanctions.
Rouhani reacted angrily to reports that the Obama administration is preparing fresh sanctions against firms and individuals in Iran, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates.
“As the US government is clearly still pursuing its hostile policies and illegal meddling … the armed forces need to quickly and significantly increase their missile capability,” Rouhani wrote in a letter on Thursday to his defence minister, Hossein Dehghan, published on the state news agency IRNA.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the US treasury department was preparing sanctions on two Iran-linked networks helping develop the missile programme.
Iranian officials had previously warned that the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, would view any new US sanctions as a violation of the nuclear deal.
US officials told the newspaper the treasury department maintained the right to sanction Iranian entities allegedly involved in missile development, or those that support rights abuses or international terrorism. (The Guardian)