The US Department of the Treasury yesterday imposed sanctions against Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
The sanctions reportedly freeze any assets Mr. Zarif may have in the United States, the department said.
"Javad Zarif implements the reckless agenda of Iran's Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei)," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said, according to the BBC.
Mr. Zarif tweeted the US had imposed sanctions on him because it considered him as a threat to its agenda.
Zarif told Al-Monitor that he was notified about the US designation while in New York, and mocked the stated US rational for the decision.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in a written statement, said the United States was designating Zarif under a recent executive order imposing sanctions on Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and others associated with him.
“Foreign Minister Zarif and the Foreign Ministry he runs take their direction from the Supreme Leader and his office,” Pompeo said in the statement. “Foreign Minister Zarif is a key enabler of Ayatollah Khamenei’s policies throughout the region and around the world.”
Reuters says Mohammad Javad Zarif lived in the United States, from the age of 17 as a student of international relations in San Francisco and Denver, and subsequently as a diplomat at the United Nations in New York, where he was Iranian ambassador from 2002 to 2007.
Iran experts said the designation could help boost Zarif and shield him from attacks by hard-liners at home, even as it exposes the Trump administration Iran policy to charges of growing incoherence.
“It is basically a boost for him [Zarif] domestically because it really neutralizes a lot of the rhetoric used against him that accuses him of being too pro-American and too close to the US position,” Ali Vaez, director of the Iran program at the International Crisis Group, told Al-Monitor.
Iran's Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations Majid Takhte Ravanchi described the sanctions against Iranian Foreign Minister as a sign of the US insincerity to negotiate with Iran, saying the sanctions cannot quell Mohammad Javad Zarif’s eloquent and persuasive words.
In an exclusive interview with IRNA on Friday morning, Takhte Ravanchi noted that the sanctions against head of diplomacy apparatus of Iran is the most important reason for US officials' insincerity to negotiate with Iran.
