US Republican senators plan to introduce legislation to impose further sanction on Iran, accusing it of violating UN Security Council resolutions by testing ballistic missiles and acting to “destabilize” the Middle East, a US senator said on Sunday.
On the other hand, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif brushed aside new pressure from the US on Sunday, declaring that his country is “unmoved by threats” but responds well to respect.
“I think it is now time for the Congress to take Iran on directly in terms of what they’ve done outside the nuclear program,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the Munich Security Conference.
Graham said he and other Republicans would introduce measures to hold Iran accountable for its actions.
Tensions between Tehran and Washington have risen since a Iranian ballistic missile test which prompted Trump’s administration to impose sanctions on individuals and entities linked to the country’s Revolutionary Guards.
“Iran is a bad actor in the greatest sense of the word when it comes to the region. To Iran, I say, if you want us to treat you differently then stop building missiles, test-firing them in defiance of UN resolution and writing ‘Death to Israel’ on the missile. That’s a mixed message,” Graham said.
Sen. Christopher Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the same panel there was nothing preventing Congress from imposing sanctions beyond those that were lifted as a result of the 2016 nuclear agreement with Iran.
Murphy, a Democrat, told the panel that he had backed the nuclear deal in the explicit understanding that it would not prevent Congress from taking actions against Iran outside the nuclear issue.
“There’s going to be a conversation about what the proportional response is,” Murphy said, referring to Iran’s missile test. “But I don’t necessarily think there’s going to be partisan division over whether or not we have the ability as a Congress to speak on issues outside of the nuclear agreement.”
Murphy said the US needed to decide whether it wanted to take a broader role in the regional conflict.
“We have to make a decision whether we are going to get involved in the emerging proxy war in a bigger way than we are today, between Iran and Saudi,” he said.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran, the US and five other world powers, under which Tehran agreed to curb its uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions, but has not said what he plans to do about it.
His administration has said Iran was “on notice” over a recent ballistic missile test, and imposed new sanctions on more than two dozen Iranian companies and individuals.
“Iran doesn’t respond well to threats,” Iranian minister Zarif told the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of top diplomats and defense officials. “We don’t respond well to coercion. We don’t respond well to sanctions, but we respond very well to mutual respect. We respond very well to arrangements to reach mutually acceptable scenarios.”
“Iran is unmoved by threats,” he said.
“Everybody tested us for many years — all threats and coercions were imposed on us,” Zarif added. He mocked “the concept of crippling sanctions,” which he said merely ended with Iran having acquired thousands more centrifuges, used for enriching uranium.
Iran has always said it has no interest in nuclear weapons. Asked how long it would take to make one if it did decide it wanted such weapons, Zarif replied: “We are not going to produce nuclear weapons, period. So it will take forever for Iran to produce nuclear weapons.”

Source: Arab News