Diplomatic path closed after US sanctions Khamenei: Iran

Bloomberg

Iran said the path to a diplomatic solution with the US had closed after the Trump administration imposed sanctions against its supreme leader and other top officials, raising tensions days after the downing of an American drone brought the Middle East to the brink of war.
President Donald Trump unveiled sanctions on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and eight senior military commanders that deny him and his office access to
financial resources. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said financial restrictions would also be introduced against Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif later.
“The futile sanctions against the Iranian leader and the country’s chief diplomat mean the permanent closure of the diplomatic path with the government of the United States,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi was quoted as saying by semi-official Iranian Students News Agency.
“The Trump government is in the process of destroying all the established international mechanisms for maintaining global peace and security.”
Treasury futures pushed higher and most Asian stock markets slipped as increasing tensions rattled investors. Oil steadied after rallying almost
8 percent in three days as investors weighed mixed signals from the White House on Iran and signs that an extension of the OPEC+ production cuts may not be assured.
Trump abruptly cancelled planned air strikes against Iran for shooting down the drone. The administration also blames Tehran for recent attacks on oil tankers near the Persian Gulf.
Tensions have spiked in the Gulf since May, when the Trump administration revoked waivers on the import of Iranian oil, squeezing its economy a year after the US walked away from the landmark 2015 deal meant to prevent the Islamic Republic from developing a nuclear weapon.
Since then, a spate of attacks on oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz shipping choke point have raised the spectre of war and pushed up oil prices.
The new penalties are unlikely to have a significant impact on a country that’s already in recession due to stringent US sanctions on its oil sector and has been largely shut out of the global financial system.
The US has sanctioned more than 80 percent of Iran’s economy, according to Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, who is in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to rally a front against Iran.
Trump has coupled his “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions with invitations to sit down with Iranian leaders. In an interview that aired on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the president said that he thinks Iranian leaders want to negotiate and he’s willing to talk with no preconditions except that the outcome must be Iran acquiring no nuclear weapons.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned of
the danger of the “deeply personalised” sanctions against Khamenei, saying events remind him of the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“We’re very concerned at what’s going on,” Lavrov said in Moscow. The latest US punitive measures “send the signal that the situation is moving in a very bad direction.” Russia is a signatory to the nuclear deal and an ally of Iran’s in Syria’s civil war. The new restrictions serve as symbolic reprimand for the recent attacks, according to former Treasury officials.
“It will have an effect because it will annoy the Iranians and make negotiations hard to pull off if the supreme leader is sanctioned,” said Brian O’Toole, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who previously worked in the US Treasury Department’s sanctions unit.

Bolton: Iran has ‘open door’ to engage US in nuke talks
Bloomberg

All Iran has to do is walk through an “open door” to negotiations on a revised nuclear deal, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser said, as he sat down for a rare three-way meeting with Israeli and Russian officials on Tehran’s contentious footprint in Syria.
The weeks-long showdown between the US and Iran intensified when President Donald Trump extended a raft of sanctions on the Iranian economy to include Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Tehran said the new penalty shut the path to diplomacy, but in Jerusalem on Tuesday, Trump adviser John Bolton said the opportunity still existed.
“The president has held the door open for real
negotiations to completely and verifiably eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, its pursuit of ballistic missiles delivery systems, its support for international terrorism, and its other malign behaviour worldwide,” he said. “All that Iran needs to do is to walk through that open door.”
Iran has rejected reopening the deal.