Iran’s parliament speaker has threatened attacks on energy infrastructure if the country’s oil sales remain blocked, state news agency IRNA reported on Tuesday.
“In a region where we cannot sell oil, no one will sell oil,” said Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, according to IRNA. “And if our security is not guaranteed, no infrastructure will be safe.”
Ghalibaf was responding to a speech by US President Donald Trump at the UN General Assembly last week, in which he again threatened severe strikes against Iran.
The US military has enforced a naval blockade since mid-July on ships seeking to enter or leave Iranian ports, bringing Iranian oil trade to a near standstill.
The lifting of the blockade is considered a central Iranian demand in negotiations with the US to end the war.
Iran and allied militias have been blamed for attacks in recent months targeting energy infrastructure – including pipelines and refineries – belonging to neighbouring Arab states.
Iran expects US response in Strait of Hormuz talks
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, meanwhile, stressed that negotiations with the US on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for the global oil and gas trade, are ongoing.
Qatar, which has been mediating in the dispute, is expected to discuss the topic again with the US and relay a “final response from the US side” on Tuesday, Araghchi said in New York late on Monday.
Just days ago, US President Donald Trump rejected Iran’s latest conditions for reopening the strait, where global shipping has virtually come to a standstill since the US and Israel began attacking Iran in late February.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Iranian demands include the lifting of the US blockade of Iranian ports.
‘Lies’: Iran reiterates it isn’t interested in nuclear weapon
Iran on Tuesday again rejected claims that it is seeking to build a nuclear bomb as “lies.”
“The claim that Iran is only a few weeks away from acquiring a nuclear weapon is the same lie that was put forward 25 years ago,” General Hossein Mohebbi, spokesman for the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was quoted as saying by the Tasnim news agency.
US and Israel justified their campaign against Iran launched on February 28 by claiming that the Islamic Republic was close to obtaining an atomic bomb, an accusation that Tehran has consistently denied.
Mohebbi accused the US government of deceiving its own citizens. If Iran had in fact been just a few weeks away from building a nuclear bomb at the turn of the millennium, it would have built one long ago, he said. “Today we can see that this claim is a huge lie.”
Following the start of the Iran war in February, Tehran denied inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access to key nuclear sites, with the fate of some 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium remaining unclear until this day.
The IAEA had repeatedly voiced concern about Tehran’s ability to enrich uranium to near-weapons grade levels.
However, the dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme has since receded into the background, with negotiations for an end to the war dominated by efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.