President Hassan Rouhani said that he will step over the deal if enemies decide to do so.

:: President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday that Iran would respond in kind to any breach by the United States of the 2015 nuclear deal after the House of Representatives passed a new sanctions bill.

“If the enemy steps over part of the agreement, we will do the same, and if they step over the entire deal, we will do the same too,” Rouhani said at a cabinet meeting aired by state broadcaster IRIB.

The Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign affairs committee said it would hold an extraordinary session on Saturday to discuss its response. The parliament voted earlier this month to fast-track a bill introduced in June that would increase funds for Iran’s missile program and Revolutionary Guards.

“We must always develop our defense capability and we will strengthen our defensive weapons regardless of the opinion of others,” Rouhani said.

Nuclear deal

The US House passed a new sanctions bill on Tuesday targeting Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, as well as Russia and North Korea. Iran’s deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said the bill was “very clearly a hostile measure” even if it was only “a compilation of previous US sanctions in the non-nuclear fields”.

Araghchi led the negotiating team that reached the deal with world powers in 2015 known as the JCPOA, under which Iran agreed to strict limits on its nuclear program in exchange for an easing of sanctions.

The new sanctions bill “can influence the successful implementation of the JCPOA and reduce Iran’s benefits under the JCPOA,” Araghchi said. “That’s why it is incompatible with various sections of the JCPOA which the US has committed to implement with good intention and in a constructive atmosphere,” the ISNA news agency quoted him as saying.

The UN and other signatories to the nuclear deal have agreed that Iran has stuck to its commitments, which has been reluctantly accepted by the administration of President Donald Trump.

“The new US administration has been forced to confirm Iran’s loyalty to the deal twice within the past six months and it has had no other option as the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) in various reports has clearly expressed Iran’s compliance with its commitments,” Araghchi said.

NCRI welcomes decision

Meanwhile, the Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), has said that imposing of new sanctions on Iran’s clerical regime, and designating the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) as terrorist constitute, is an essential step in the right direction that needs to be completed by other measures.

“This is an essential step in rectifying the damaging policy of appeasement that needs to be completed by other measures including the eviction of the IRGC and its affiliated militia particularly from Syria and Iraq as well as the recognition of the Iranian people’s right to overthrow the clerical regime,” a statement released by NCRI said.

According to the statement, designating and imposing such sanctions was long overdue as the IRGC serves as the guarantee to preserve the entirety of the religious fascism ruling Iran and is the main entity responsible for domestic suppression, the export of terrorism and extremism, and obtaining weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

“In the past 28 years, the Iranian regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei has placed a vast portion of the wealth and resources of the Iranian people under IRGC’s control, enabling it to plunder a large portion of Iran’s economy,” it said.