Iran Urges US To Abandon “Reliance on Sanctions”

Iranian Foreign Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh made the remarks the day after the U.S. Treasury Department announced financial sanctions against four more Iranians.

"Washington has to understand that it has no choice but to abandon its reliance on sanctions and show respect, both in its statements and behavior, towards Iran," Khatibzadeh said in a statement.

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According to the U.S. Treasury, the four people added to its blacklist on Friday are "four Iranian intelligence operatives" accused of masterminding the 2018 kidnapping of Iranian-born American journalist Masih Alinejad, an outspoken critic of the Iranian government and feminist activist behind the anti-veil movement.

The U.S. judiciary announced in July the dismantling of the plot, according to which Iranian intelligence agents tried in 2018 to force Alinejad's relatives to have her travel to a third country so that they could arrest her and take her prisoner to Iran. 

In 2018, Trump unilaterally pulled the United States out of the Vienna international agreement on Iran's nuclear program and reimposed sanctions against Tehran.

Biden, who succeeded him in January in the White House, says he wants to rejoin the pact. But negotiations to allow it, begun in Vienna in April, have been stalled since the victory of Ebrahim Raisi in the June presidential election.

In August, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei accused the Biden administration of being the same as the previous one because "although it uses other words on the nuclear issue, it demands the same from Iran as Trump."